Shadowy Rose, Dark Path
by Zelith
Summary: A young halfa moves to Amity Park, followed by his worst enemies. A tormented 15-year-old, he jumps at every little shadow. He happens to meet Danny Phantom while surveying the town and he flees in fright. As he slowly becomes friends with Danny Fenton, he can't help but wonder just what the connection is. No PP, DannyxOC (This is boy x boy, don't like don't read)
1. Chapter 1

I was running for my life.

As a halfa, I was terrified of ghosts especially the one I fled from now. His name was Skulker, a tiny ghost in a robotic battle suit. He was the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter, and he wanted my pelt. My black hair hung in my face, the wind doing nothing to blow it out of my way. I could hear him ready one of his guns and I tensed, ready to get out of the way. However, that proved unnecessary.

As soon as he was about to shoot me and I about to jump away, I heard another blast from behind me. I dove behind a tree and turned invisible, watching the fight with wide eyes. The one eye that showed through my hair, a brightly shy turquoise, widened considerably when I saw who was fighting Skulker. Danny Phantom, resident ghost hero of Amity Park, of which I was going to be moving to by the time the summer was over. Skulker disappeared inside a tiny thermos while Danny Phantom laughed good-naturedly, and I hesitantly took a step towards him.

A blue mist exited his mouth and he looked at me, and I froze like a squirrel. He tried to ask me who I was, but the moment he took a step towards me I bolted. However, in running, I tripped over my own feet (a rock didn't help) and tumbled to the ground. Danny Phantom came closer, his snowy white hair speckled with dust from the fight. Panting in panic, I scrambled backwards away from him. I was still in ghost form, and who knew what he would do to me if he thought I was a full ghost?

Life as a halfa is never fun, but it's the only life I can remember. I was in an accident a few years ago, and I lost a lot of my memory from that. From what I figured, I was half-dead. Oh no, I forgot I was here still! Danny Phantom was closer now, trying to check me over for injuries, but I yanked my arm away and I got to my feet in terror.

"Hey," he tried to soothe me, "I'm not going to hurt you. Who are you?"

His voice was strangely peaceful and strangely... concerned? He was concerned over me? He took a step forward and I, cowardly as always, took a step back. The ghost hero seemed to suddenly realize that he was terrifying me, because a look of realization came over his face and he backed away from me a little. Not that I could go anywhere; we were under a tree now, and I was backed up against the tree. I didn't really have a good handle on my intangibility yet.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said again, and my hyperventilating ceased a tiny bit. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"M-My name i-is Shadow," I whispered, and I had to hold back a squeak when he smiled and took another step towards me. I tried to back up, to no avail. "U-Um, y-you don't r-really n-n-need to know w-why I'm h-here. I-I'm n-not caus-sing any t-trouble..." I yelp when he frowns and takes a few more steps towards me.

Not waiting for him to reply, I turn intangible and go through the tree, flying away before my powers short out. Being in ghost form always took so much energy from me for some reason, and I figured it was my mother's witch blood that flowed through my veins that was messing with the stamina of my ghost powers. I hoped that I wouldn't run into Danny Phantom again. I don't want to go back to the Ghost Zone. The Ghost Zone scared me. It truly terrified me. I had so many enemies there, and I had no family or friends. Here, I hoped to start fresh. I would be going to Casper High in the fall.

And yet, I couldn't convince myself that I wouldn't run into him. That blue mist he gasped out, a ghost sense. If he was a halfa like me, like I suspected he was since a bunch of my enemies were also his enemies and always talked about how they were going to catch the "Ghost Child, Danny Phantom, that halfa" or whatever they called him. He looked about my age, 15. If he was a halfa, he would be going to Casper High in the fall too. Oh no, his ghost sense would alert him to me!

What was I going to do? I changed back to my human form in the house I had taken shelter in, calling the abandoned place my own and making sure that no one else lived here and that it wasn't going to be torn down anytime soon. I'd moved all my clothes and my belongings into the house, and I'd bought food. I'd hacked the power and water to be able to be used, and I kept myself out of sight. School started tomorrow. I had everything I would need; a black backpack, the items that the school had listed for me that I need to buy, and money for buying lunch.

I only hoped everything would be alright. Of course, I was wrong. Like always.


	2. Chapter 2

I started Casper High the next day, and I was more than terrified of just getting near the school bus. So instead, I challenged the bus driver to a little race, and strangely he accepted. I guessed that kids were like that here.

Every time he looked out the window to look at me, I was just a few steps ahead of the bus. I knew because I myself frequently looked back, smirking. I was racing a bus and _winning!_ I could see the shock on his face, and I had to say that I was enjoying this. I stopped to breathe whenever the bus stopped, and by the time I got to the school I was winded. I ignored the people who were murmuring as they got off the bus, no doubt about the new kid who had just won a race against the bus.

The triumph of confidence of winning the race faded quickly, and suddenly I was just a shy teenager being talked to by one of the buffest kids I had ever seen. He had on a red letterman jacket, his eyes were blue and his hair blonde. I whimpered as he got close to me, even though he had what I supposed was meant to be an encouraging smile.

"Hey," he said, smiling brightly at me. "Name's Dash. Dash Baxter. You a new kid, right?"

"U-Um," I stuttered, shrinking down a little. "Y-yes, I-I'm new h-here..."

He beamed. "Good, good! Say, how's your schedule?" Without waiting, he took it and shouted. "Aw yeah, you're in all of my classes! Just follow me around and we can be friend, alright kid? What's your name?"

I was getting even more intimidated by him as he backed me against the wall even more, because I kept trying to back away from him when I really should have just grabbed my schedule and run forward.

"M-My name's R-Rose," I whispered, trembling now. I assumed this kid, Dash, was part of the football team; I could see it in his face. Oh no. Was he trying to recruit me for football? I'd never played football in my entire life! Dash sort of grabbed my long-sleeve jacket and dragged me along, me only following so that my dark grey jacket wouldn't rip. He made me sit next to him, boxed in by some of his other "friends".

I noticed a black-haired kid with blue eyes and I asked about him, rather timidly, to Dash. Dash just chuckled and told me that the kid was the resident weakling of the school, named Danny Fenton. Dash tried to get me to come up with a good name to call Danny, but I couldn't think of one. Well, really, I could think of a lot of names but I was far too kind to call someone a horrible name. So I just told my new "friend" that I didn't have anything to work with and that I was sure that he could think up a name because he was "so smart".

I wanted to growl a little. He looked dumber than the kid at my old school who couldn't tell the two ends of a pencil apart. I met Mr. Lancer, who was thoroughly impressed with my knowledge of books even though I'd been reading Edgar Allen Poe's works of literature since I was in 5th grade. I nearly cried when Dash tried to get me to pick on Fenton with him, and I politely declined and managed to slip off.

I followed Dash around like a lost puppy, only using him to get to my classes. I soon found out that Danny Fenton also had all of his classes with me, so I considered asking him to show me around because I was pretty much terrified of Dash. Well, I was terrified of Fenton too but he looked much less intimidating than Dash did, even though Fenton was still taller than me by at least a foot. I was a pretty short kid, only 4'2" for a 15-year-old.

Multiple times, I caught people whispering about me. One girl, a very pretty but obviously shallow girl by the name of Paulina Sanchez, tried to get me to show her what my eye looked like under the shadowy-purple hair of my human form. I certainly didn't want to show anyone the empty socket where my right eye should have been, it having been clawed out by a ghost named Plasmius, who kept trying to get me to side with him. I could tell that he wanted to just use me, and I'd left my old home in Wisconsin to get away from him.

When Dash learned that I wasn't going to join the football team because I was terrified of everything save for butterflies, he stuffed me into his locker. I sighed and became intangible the moment he closed the locker door, climbing out when a black-haired girl with a ponytail let me out. I was shaking from exhaustion of using my intangibility, which drained me the most out of my powers. She called over two of her friends, one of which who happened to be Danny Fenton, and the other I learned was named Tucker Foley.

They had me sit near them for lunch, and we all compared schedules. In the one class that I didn't have with Danny, Gym, the black-haired girl, Sam Manson, was in with me. I felt myself growing at ease with the three friends, though I stayed out of most of the conversation and spaced off quite a bit. I felt a ghost sense coming up, and I turned away and pretended to cough to let the mist out. I didn't notice the mist come out of Danny's mouth too, and, for the second time that day, I nearly cried. Of course it had to be the Box Ghost, though, just playing a prank on me. The Box Ghost and I were sort of friends, he at least didn't go off on a rant about himself every time he popped up around me.

Pouting and blushing furiously, I slowly stalked my way over to the Box Ghost and slapped him. Hard. I whispered furiously to him and told him that the next time he scares me for no reason, I would shoot an ecto-ray at him no matter who was around. Of course, Skulker showed up after that and I hid to turn into my ghost form. I tried to distract Skulker, and when I did I noticed a tuft of white hair. Danny Phantom.

Danny Phantom had said he wasn't going to hurt me... so maybe I could trust him.

"Phantom!" I called, trying to control the stutter in my voice. "Let's take S-Skulker out, eh?"

Phantom looked startled at my call, but he smirked and nodded in way of answering. He looked sort of like Danny... if you just made his hair black and his eyes green... but now wasn't the time for that. I used my agility to spin out of the way of the incoming rockets while also shooting a purple ecto-ray at Skulker, and by the time that Phantom pulled out his weird thermos thing, I was exhausted again. When he'd sucked up Skulker again, I realized that he would talk to me.

Terrified once more, I hid and changed back to my human form. I called out to the three friends, Phantom having suddenly disappeared and Danny returned. I asked them why they hadn't left the cafeteria, and they answered evasively. I blinked and nodded, not really believing them.

"Okay, what class is next..." I muttered, looking over my schedule. I trembled a little. Gym. Gym with Sam Manson and Dash Baxter. Oh no.


	3. Chapter 3

**Thank you Frostbite711 for your wonderful reviews! **

Sam seemed all too happy to drag me, literally, to Gym with Mrs. Tetslaf. When I saw her, I immediately doubted that she was married but, far too polite for my own good, I just called her "Mrs. Tetslaf". I paid for a uniform and let her write my last name, Forrest, on the back of my shirt. Thankfully for me, Dash seemed to ignore me.

At the time for laps, I ran with Sam who seemed to be surprised that I could keep up with her so easily. I guessed that she hadn't been on the bus that morning when I raced the bus and won. She kept asking me questions about myself, personal questions which I answered only because of my fear of losing her as a friend.

"Where do you live?" she asked, and I thought I saw a hint of a challenge in her lavender eyes. Challenge? Did she expect me not to say anything?

"Um, I-I live in t-the apartm-ment compl-plex 5 m-minutes N-north of the s-school," I stuttered, not meeting her eyes. It was true, but I never told her the exact apartment number I lived in.

"Number?"

"I-I'm not comfortable with that question," I mumbled, and to my surprise she let it drop. Though I didn't realize it until I asked her why she let it drop so easily, she had seen my expression of apprehension and discomfort, and had realized she was pushing me too far. She probably also realized that I wasn't going to speak any more on the subject of where I lived.

"Favorite color?" She had a smile on her face, which I felt fit her despite her being goth.

"Turquoise," I answered, smiling shyly myself. She kept piling on the questions before I finally managed to interrupt her and get one at her. Where did she live? What was her favorite color? Did she like music?

To that last one, she said that she really liked meaningful music. I nodded thoughtfully and managed to somehow tell her, throughout all my stammering, that I liked to sing. She lit up at that and as Mrs. Tetslaf split the girls and boys into teams for a game of dodgeball, she tried to get me to agree to join choir. I, too shy to really do something so socially active and still needing to finish getting my living space clean, declined but told her that I'd very willingly record a song for her if she told me what she wanted the song to be about.

We stopped talking except for short calls to each other to watch out or "I've got your back" every once in a while. After nearly the whole period, it was just me and her on our team, and Dash Baxter on the other team. We gave each other a quick glance, then we nodded in union and dove forward and rolled away in opposite directions as we grabbed a ball each. Without looking at each other, we moved in perfect sync with each other and threw at Dash, two different directions, mine hitting him on his left shoulder and hers hitting him on his right side.

I didn't think that anyone would ever let Dash live down the fact that the new kid and the goth had taken him down in one fell swoop. I changed and when the bell rung, we went off to class together, the only class that I had with Sam, Danny, and Tucker. Tucker, the technogeek, was fiddling around with his PDA and Sam couldn't manage to get his attention; neither could Danny. They looked to me and I sighed, realizing that my high-pitched voice could very easily startle him enough to drop his PDA.

I took a deep breath and shouted right into Tucker's ear, though it was a bit quieter than what Sam and Danny had expected. Well, really, what _did_ they expect? I was hardly ever louder than a whisper, and not once during the whole day had anyone heard me speak at a "normal" volume. However, I did manage to startle Tucker into dropping his PDA. I caught it before it hit the ground with my ghost speed, which I immediately realized I shouldn't have done because Danny gave me a strange glance.

"Here's your PDA, Tucker," I squeaked, shakily giving him his PDA.

"Thanks, Rose," he sighed. The kid cast a rueful glance at Sam and Danny, who were trying not to laugh. "Did they set you up to that?"

"Um, yes." I winced a little, had I hurt his ear? "I-I'm sorry if I h-hurt your e-ear..."

"Oh no!" he said quickly, shaking his hands. "No, you didn't hurt me at all. I was just surprised, that's all. I didn't think that you'd do that without a little extra shove." He glared at Danny and Sam for me, who quickly stopped their laughing and rolled their eyes. I followed them to class, talking more with Tucker than with Sam and Danny. I screamed, again not very loudly, when one of the other football players, Kwan I thought Dash said?, jumped out from behind a door and shouted.

Instinctively, I hid behind the nearest person; that person just so happened to be Danny. He seemed a little surprised that I was hiding behind him, but then he must have remembered my shyness and that I'd been forced to spend my morning with Dash and this kid, because he told Kwan to shove off and Kwan just laughed, waltzing away. I was trembling, and the only thing that got me moving towards class was the threat that I would be late if I stood there.

Science was pretty fun, and so was Biology and History class. Biology class I had to suddenly leave the room because of my habit of coughing up ectoplasm every once in a while. So I rushed to the bathrooms and coughed up quite a bit of ectoplasm into the trash can, sighing when the coughing subsided and making sure that no traces of ectoplasm or the tiny bit of blood that also came up was no longer on my face. I returned to class and settled down, listening to the lecture with boredom. I'd learned this bit last year and remembered it quite well.

Once school was over, Sam remembered my offer and wrote down an entire list of things to make songs about, and I thanked her and raced the bus home again. Making sure no one was looking, I became intangible and invisible at the same time and phased my way through the door into my living space. Sighing, I got ready to clean things up more. However, I had failed to check the sky before I entered the accommodation, and thus did not realize that I had in fact been watched by a certain ghost hero. As I got to work, I got so caught up in getting the dust off of everything that I also failed to notice my own ghost sense.

However, by 5 PM I hadn't finished getting the dust up. Every time I double-checked a room, new dust seemed to suddenly appear somewhere that I could very vividly recall cleaning. By 6 PM I gave up and made myself a salad and fried fish to eat, being a pescatarian. I didn't eat meat, but I did eat other animal products like milk and other dairy products while also eating fish. I finished eating quickly and looked over the list that Sam had given me for song ideas. I went through the list, but I was tired. I'd used so much energy today, even though it didn't feel like that way to me. My body, however, protested against what I thought was correct and I sighed, curling up in bed. Exhausted by seemingly nothing, I fell into a deep sleep, unaware of the green eyes that stared at me in concern.


	4. Chapter 4

When I woke up, it was 6 am exactly. I had a way of doing that, waking up right on the dot of 6 AM no matter when I fell asleep. I sighed and sluggishly got to my feet, not really awake until I'd dug out a piece of chocolate and eaten it. I got ready for school in a slow fashion, taking my time to unplug my mp3 player and find my headphones and get dressed. Even through doing this, it was only 6:45 when I had finally gotten ready for school. This happened a lot.

Pouting and the sighing in defeat, I shrugged on my grey peacoat (which I liked to call "my detective coat") and headed out for school. I didn't bother running until I saw the school bus pass me, and by then I was completely up for the challenge. I ended up at the school half a minute after the bus, needing to stop to catch my breath much more often than I had yesterday. My foot twitched and I coughed my ghost sense into my coat sleeve, shivering a little. I hated how cold the ghost sense made me.

I didn't see Danny for an entire half a period, during which Mr. Lancer gave us our assigned seats in his English class. I ended up with Danny,seated relatively close by, though Danny was in fact right next to me and I would most likely be put in charge of keeping him awake during class. He had dozed off twice in a 5-minute time span yesterday, even though Lancer was really just going over what we would be covering this year in general terms.

The raven-haired kid ran into class with a pass from Principal Ishiyama, saying something about sleeping late. Mr. Lancer just sighed and took his pass, pointing to his seats. I didn't really pay attention, doodling a small cat hunting a squirrel sketch in pencil, and I definitely didn't notice that Danny was watching me draw until he pushed a note onto my desk while Lancer's back was turned.

_Your drawing looks really neat,_ he had written. _How are you so good at drawing?_

I looked at the front of the room nervously, but I quickly scribbled down an answer. _Thanks. I draw a lot, I guess practice really does make perfect._

We exchanged notes like that for the entire period, me discreetly passing notes to Danny while I took down some notes for him to copy. We took turns taking notes, because passing notes was much more fun and it was less work if we just copied down each other's notes during lunch. Mr. Lancer passed out some sort of grammar worksheet, which I completed in the remaining 5 minutes of class. Danny just sighed and stared at the paper like he'd never seen participial phrases before. I have him a _are-you-shitting-me-right-now_ look, though I did end up quietly promising him that I would let him copy my answers.

Right before lunch, Dash cornered me in the hallway against my locker as he tried to force my hair away from my empty eye socket to see it. Even though he didn't know that it would even look different than my other eye, he knew I kept it covered up for a reason. I finally got fed up with his hands near my face and I shoved him away, growling in anger and pulling the curtain of shadowy-purple hair away from my face. The blonde quarterback fell silent in surprise and shock, and it looked to me that he was studying the burn mark around the socket...

I growled again and let my hair fall down, covering up that horror again. I turned away from him, finished getting my things for my next classes, and went off to the cafeteria. Tucker and Danny pestered me about Dash's sudden aversion to getting close to me, and I explained to them about how I lost my right eye and that I'd shown it to him just like he'd wanted. Even Sam snickered.

I suddenly noticed that Sam had a salad, and I brightened a little. "Oh, you're an ultra-recyclo-vegetarian, Sam?"

Sam grinned and nodded. "Yeah. Surprised you recognized it. Are you one, too?"

"Actually, I'm an ultra-recyclo-pescetarian."

"What's the difference? Neither of you eat meat," Tucker sighed, the self-proclaimed "meat connoisseur" obviously not pleased that I didn't eat meat either.

"The difference?" I snorted, cracking my own little shy smile. "Sam eats no animal products. I eat fish and I do eat animal products; just not meat." Tucker and Danny gave me a _you're-serious-right-now_ look, and I simply gave them a simperingly helpless smile. Somehow, that little smile got both of them blushing, and I chuckled.

"Anyone would think that you two have crushes on the new kid you've only known for two days," Sam teased, grinning wider when their blushes got worse.

"Not that there's a problem with that," I murmured, just loud enough for the three to hear. "Being bisexual has its perks."

For the rest of the lunch period, they were asking me questions about what it was like to be bi.

Gym was okay, I somehow ended up on Dash's team and against Sam, though that didn't stop her from getting me out. I did end up getting her out too, though, my ball hitting her after she'd hit me. I chuckled with her and called it an 'afterlife', which is the term gamers use when they kill someone after dying. She knew it what that meant and we had a good talk about Doomed until we were both back in the game, trying to get each other out so that we could talk more.

Unfortunately, I ended up having to leave the room in Biology again, coughing up more ectoplasm. It sucked how the Biology room smelled like such strong chemicals that my ectoplasm reacted harshly. When I entered the room again, I settled down in my little pocket of friends only to be hit by a question that I did not expect.

"So, Rose," Sam said casually, "do you think we could all meet up at your place later today after school? My parents will be out, Tucker's are sick, and Danny's are.. well, they're trying to invent something new to hunt ghosts with. Your place would be okay, right?"


	5. Chapter 5

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. I really didn't want my friends seeing where I lived for fear that they'd either tell the authorities or spend their time trying to convince me to live with one of them. I was perfectly fine where I was, thank you!

"U-Uh, t-that's not a good idea," I stuttered, shrinking away from them just a tiny bit.

"Why not?" Danny asked, leaning over onto my desk. "Is there something you don't want us to know?"

A small electric shock ran through me and Danny's hand, which he had been using to pin my hand to my desk so that I wouldn't run away, jerked back. Those little electric shocks happened all the time, they never really hurt. They just stung a bit. Before I could gather the courage to leave the room, Danny recovered from the sting and pinned my hand to my desk again, leaving no way to escape.

"T-The house i-is just a m-mess, t-that's all," I laughed nervously. "I-I have t-to finish cleaning..."

Apparently, they were not letting this go. Even Tucker got in on trying to make me tell them where I lived, and eventually I just fell silent and, hanging my head, thought for a while. I didn't have this problem in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, everyone pretty much ignored me and I was just the quiet kid who knew the answers to everything and was too kind to not help you study right before the test. I'd never been pressured like this to let someone come over my house; everyone had just really... known. No one ever tried to come over my house there anyway, though. Most people only dropped by to do school projects or for me to help them study.

"You guys aren't going to let this go, are you," I eventually sighed, stating my sentence instead of phrasing it as a question.

"No, not really," Sam said, trying not to laugh.

I sighed again and finally relented my aversion to them coming over, but I did force them to promise to not tell anyone where I lived and to not freak out. They promise, and then I made Tucker and Danny double-promise because Danny had his fingers crossed and Tucker wasn't paying attention. For the rest of the Biology period, I was silent and refusing to pass notes with them, silently upset that they had pressured me into letting them follow me home. Though, I guess it didn't really count as home when you were living there illegally and you had hacked the circuits for everything you needed. But home was where you lived, right? It was confusing.

After school, I led them to the apartment complex but this time, instead of phasing through the wall, I picked the lock on the door and let them in. For the most part, they didn't freak out. Not even Sam freaked out, and I ended up baking cookies for us all. Well, since Sam was a vegetarian and didn't eat anything with animal product in it, I made special vegetarian-friendly cookies for her. She instructed me on the specific recipe of her favorite kind, and she was rather happy that the cookies turned out well.

"So, you live here? I heard this apartment was haunted and that's why it hasn't been rented out for a while," Danny commented, eating the cookies with a casualness I wished I had. We had all settled on the long couch, but I still wasn't used to the questions.

"U-Uh, yeah... T-There was a g-ghost here, b-but I m-managed to convince i-it to l-leave." Instead, it now haunted my old home in Wisconsin.

"And now it's haunted by you? Sick!" Tucker exclaimed, getting really excited over this. I thought everyone could talk to ghosts in the calm, persuasive way that I did. Was this something only I could do because of my personality?

"I-I guess you could say that," I whispered, trying not to squeak. Everything was okay for about an hour until Sam brought up a question I was dreading.

"So, Rose," she said, a concerned frown on her face, "why do you live here? Don't you have parents?"

Danny and Tucker winced when I obviously retreated into my shy turtle shell. "U-Um, n-no. My p-parents h-have been d-dead for a l-long t-time..." I mumbled into my shirt, shivering when I let out a ghost sense. At the same time, Danny gasped and shivered as well. I didn't notice anything, so maybe I had accidentally shocked him again?

Danny disappeared to the kitchen, while I turned to the closet. Tucker and Sam had run with Danny, which was better for me. I changed to my ghost form and became invisible and intangible, ready to fight. It was one thing to be hunted down outside. It was another thing entirely to be tracked to my house and hunted there. Why did Skulker come after me so much? Or maybe he was here for Tucker, Sam, or Danny, or maybe all three?

Why would he be after them?

I narrowed my eyes and tensed, watching Skulker's every move. However, I got distracted by a new presence, one that I knew far too well for my liking. Danny Phantom. Oh great, now four people knew where I lived...

Skulker chuckled, to my great confusion. "Aha... I was tracking the shadow ghost, but now I get both your pelts on my wall!"

Phantom grimaced and said, "Dude, gross."

I coughed and winced at Skulker's eagerness to get our pelts on his wall. "Gross is right. Who puts pelts on their wall?"

Phantom gave me a quick glance, and I immediately knew he hadn't been aware of me until now. Together, we defeated Skulker yet again and this time we wrecked Skulker's suit pretty good. As soon as Phantom had sucked Skulker back up again, I disappeared. I saw him look around for me, disappointment on his face, before he too disappeared. I went back to the closet and changed back into Rose, peeking out when I heard my friends come back into the living room. I tried not to limp when I exited the closet, having gotten hit on the leg pretty badly.

"Are you guys okay?" I asked them apologetically. I noticed that Danny also seemed to be trying not to limp. Sam shook her head at my question and cast an annoyed glance at Danny.

"He fell down the stairs like an idiot," she sighed, checking his heavily bruised calf for breaks. I gave a tiny sigh of relief, glad that my friends hadn't been hurt any worse than a bruised calf from "falling like an idiot". Only when they went home to get their homework done did I realize something.

I didn't have stairs in my apartment that went down from the kitchen. I didn't really understand why Sam would lie to me like that, but I shrugged it off. I was lying to them too, so I guess I had no say on their lying to me. I sighed and did my own homework, texting Tucker the answers to the participial phrases worksheet and asking him to send the answers to Danny too, and Sam if she wanted them. He thanked me and Danny later texted me saying thanks. I saved his number for future use.

Sam apparently didn't want the answers, but I knew she was smart. She didn't need them. Tucker and Danny were smart as well, but they just decided not to put in any effort. Not that I minded sharing my answers with them.

The next day, my third day at school, was Friday. None of my friends said anything about my living arrangements, for which I was grateful. Unfortunately, Dash had gotten over the horror that was my missing eye and he shoved Danny and I into his locker. I didn't dare go intangible now, not when someone else was nearby. Sam and Tucker were already in their separate classes, so we were let out of the locker by another geek named Mikey. Mikey was a rather nice kid, and I thanked him.

He acted like no one had ever thanked him before, which might have been the sad truth, and hurried off to his own class. Danny and I ran to Lancer's class, getting into our seats just before the bell rung. Mr. Lancer gave us a strange look, but he said nothing. As long as we were here on time, I guessed. Danny and I passed notes again, taking turns writing down notes for the other to copy after class. My leg had healed overnight and Danny's seemed to have as well, for which I was grateful. He couldn't question me if he had healed just as fast.

I tried to pay attention to Mr. Lancer, I really did, but I was far more interested in sketching a picture of Danny Phantom shoving Skulker into the tiny thermos device. Danny looked at me, surprised, but he must have realized that I was only drawing this because I was bored because he didn't comment on the picture when he passed a note to me again.

_What do you say to coming over to my house today? My parents really want to meet you. My dad mostly just wants to blather on about ghosts to you._ Danny's note almost my heart freeze, the very first line startling me. I wrote out a quick _Sure_ to his question, and then tried to focus on not hyperventilating. I only hoped they didn't try out their inventions on me. I didn't want to be discovered as a half-ghost, something that was supposed to be physically impossible.


	6. Chapter 6

Sam and Tucker ended up having stuff to do, so it was just me and Danny hanging out. I didn't know Danny as well as I knew Sam, but I certainly wasn't going to complain about getting to know him better. The poor kid warned me that his parents would probably hold us up for a little while before they let us go, but to get them to leave us alone I would have to feign disinterest. In my case, I wouldn't have to feign it. I really wasn't interested in weapons that could potentially kill me completely.

Sure enough, as soon as we entered FentonWorks his mother, Maddie Fenton, and his father, Jack Fenton, talked to us and while Danny's mother made a bunch of remarks about how "adorable" I was and Danny's father blathered on about his new invention, I kept a disinterested look and ignored the fact that Mrs. Fenton was teasing Danny about wanting to keep me "all to himself" when he tried to drag me away. I followed him with a small smile, forcing down a blush at Mrs. Fenton's motherly attitude.

"You did not tell me your parents were like that," I told Danny, shaking my left index finger at him accusingly. He laughed a little in a friendly way and apologized, his speech getting interrupted by his snickers. We spent the next hour just asking each other questions, and at one point I told Danny that if we were going to ask questions we might as well play 20 Questions. He shot down that idea by saying that he hated the game, and I let it go at that.

I did end up meeting Danny's sister, Jazz, but we only talked for a few minutes before she tried to analyze my mental state and Danny made her leave the room.

"Sorry, she does that. She wants to be a psychiatrist," Danny sighed, and I chuckled a little.

"That's alright. She reminds me a little of my mother, always trying to know what was going on inside everyone's heads." The one remaining purple eye of my human form faintly noticed Danny's expression, but I mentally ignored it and told Danny that we'd better do our homework now or it wouldn't get done. He sighed heavily and mumbled something about hoping I'd forgotten about the homework, but he nonetheless pulled out his homework while I got out mine and we did it together.

By the time we were finished, an entire one-and-a-half hours had passed and Mrs. Fenton was calling up to Danny to tell him that dinner was almost done. He hurried downstairs to ask her if I could stay, even though I tried to convince him that I was perfectly okay with going home and coming back tomorrow or some other time. Somehow he managed to get his mother to agree and, as luck would have it, there was no meat for dinner. Just roasted fish, which actually happened to be my favorite form of cooked fish.

I felt more than a little out-of-place eating with the Fentons but Mr. Fenton talked about the invention that he had upgraded, something he called the "Specter Deflector 8.0". I didn't like the sound of that. Neither did Danny, who grew became a little quieter when his father started talking about the ghost hunting equipment. He talked about the Fenton thermos (which I was going to point out looked like the thermos that Danny Phantom had but then my courage left me) and about the "Ghost Gabber" and the "Ghost Gauntlets". I listened halfheartedly, not really interested in weapons that could kill me.

"And... n-none of these w-weapons c-can hurt h-humans, r-right?" I whispered, and Mr. Fenton nodded eagerly. He went on to talk about how the "Jack-o-nine-tails" would shock ghosts but do nothing to humans, and how they had "phase-proof" nets. I tried to be polite, I really did, but I was more than relieved when Danny asked his dad not to talk about ghosts when he had a friend over. The older man looked a bit hurt, but instead went on to talk to his wife about how ghosts couldn't feel emotion. I silently begged to differ, I was half-ghost and I still had emotions! Plenty of ghosts I'd met had emotions too, they just preferred not to show them around humans.

After dinner, Danny tried to convince me (in the privacy of his room) to stay over for the night, as it was getting dark and he said he didn't feel like I should walk home that night. I, however, told him that I would rather go home for the night and just come back in the morning to get his lazy butt out of bed. I won the argument and at 8 PM, I walked home. As soon as I was out of sight of FentonWorks, I went into my ghost form and flew home; Danny's concerned look as he told me that he didn't feel as though I should walk home that night had stuck in my head.

I curled up in my bed but didn't fall asleep. Well, I fell asleep once but nightmares about my past plagued me so much that I woke up at 11 PM and stayed up. The nightmare had been about my mother, specifically how she died. I tried to banish the image of my witch mother being burned by people who didn't believe she was human, the people who tossed me into the Ghost Zone where I was found by Vlad Masters while the millionaire was scouting through the Zone for ghosts who meant to cause trouble, Vlad Masters of whom paid for me to live in my own home. Vlad Masters was a nice guy, sort of a fruit loop but very compassionate. Vlad Plasmius, on the other hand, was the exact opposite.

I forced myself not to think about my nightmare, not to think about my mother, not to think about Plasmius, to think instead about how it would be Saturday soon. By refusing to acknowledge what kept me awake, my mind relaxed and I fell asleep once more.

I woke up to my three friends in my house.

It wasn't a very nice awakening, getting up at 10 am only to hear people in your kitchen. I peeked in and audibly sighed in relief at the sight of them just hanging around my kitchen.

"Sorry, Rose," Sam apologized. "Did we wake you?"

"Nah, don't worry about it. But, you know, it would have been better for me to wake up to you guys knocking on the door instead of waking up to you guys just hanging around my kitchen." I invited them into the living room, both Danny and Tucker looking a little guilty at having not at least knocked first before entering my house. I got Tucker and Danny into a heated argument about who was better at Doomed, which Sam and I found pretty hilarious while we compared being a pescatarian to being a vegetarian.

My excuse for liking to be a pescatarian was that I didn't have to abstain from all animal products, just meat. Sam just liked to be unique, which was why she was a goth ultra-recyclo-vegetarian. We eventually stopped talking and just laughed at the funny parts of Danny and Tucker's argument, which just so happened to be the entire thing.

After we got the two boys to calm down a little, we all went to the park after I'd disappeared to my room and gotten dressed. I hadn't expected to go anywhere today, so the park was a nice change of my plans. Originally, I was just going to sit inside all day and try to write song lyrics. But going to park sounded much more fun.

Of course, being at the park wasn't fun for the entire two hours we stayed there. No, for the last half-an-hour all four of us ended up trying to escape Johnny 13's wrath. At some point, Danny got separated from us and I noticed that Phantom had appeared. Apparently, Johnny was upset because his girlfriend, Kitty, had told him that he was lame. Which, personally, I thought was true. There was no way that Johnny 13 was as cool as he claimed to be.

Kitty was a sort of friend of mine just like the Box Ghost, except I was slightly terrified of her because she could make me disappear with a kiss. Besides, I didn't really want Kitty to kiss me anyway, thanks. Johnny sped past Phantom and grabbed me by the scruff of my jacket, pulling me onto his motorcycle behind him and with terror in my expression, he dragged me back to the Ghost Zone with him.

Either Kitty had convinced Johnny to bring me to her so that she could mess with my hair, or Johnny was planning to keep me hostage so that he could kill Phantom and then me. Either way, I was terrified. And I didn't have high hopes of being rescued and getting away alive.


	7. Chapter 7

**What is this? Three chapters in one day from me? Eheheh, yes! I'll probably post more chapters on the weekends because of free time. Hope you guys enjoy this chapter! Also, fanart would be very appreciated if anyone decides to draw some! Don't feel like you have to, though, I just like to see other people draw my characters. '.**

I sighed for the thousandth time as Kitty tried to style my messy hair in a better way. She'd forced me to promise not to go into my ghost form and now I was settled on the floor against her legs, her trying to get my purple hair to style right. However, my hair was always full of static energy; it never could settle for more than a few seconds, half a minute at most. I really just let her do whatever she wanted, as I was afraid of disappearing.

Danny, Sam, and Tucker had tried to rescue me once so far, Johnny chasing them off but coming back to keep guard. I wasn't allowed to leave until Kitty had had her fun, not that I was going to try. I'd tried that once and Kitty had backhanded me. My cheek stung just remembering that. I was not ever going to let her get a chance to do that ever again. Last time she did, I had a bruise the size of a baseball on my cheekbone until it healed.

Danny's parents' strange ship-type thing, called the "Fenton Speeder", went by again, and I tried to signal to my friends not to try another rescue attempt. I would never forgive myself if they got hurt trying to save me. They didn't get the hint, though, because Danny walked through the wall (they knew that humans were the ghosts in the Ghost Zone) and tried to hit Johnny away with a well-aimed blase from his ecto-gun.

Needless to say, it failed. Well, it was going good for a while, but then Johnny broke the gun and Kitty made Danny let her mess with his hair, too. Sam and Tucker did not attempt to enter now that they finalyl realized that rescue was futile until Kitty was done.

"See, this is why you should have paid attention when I tried to signal for you not to come in," I told Danny, who simply groaned and huffed as Kitty messed up his hair.

"Does she do this every time she has Johnny kidnap you?"the black-haired boy sighs, giving me an upset glance. I snort a little, fighting off a smile in a losing battle.

"Not always. Sometimes she tries to hold me hostage so that she can mess up someone else's hair." Danny only groans louder.

***line break***

Sam and Tucker didn't let us live down the fact that Kitty had completely messed up our hair, and I ended up punching Tucker in the arm and giving him a big bruise.

"Don't mess with a 5th-degree black belt, Tucker," I growled. "That goes for you too, Sam." For the next half of the trip, they talked about anything except for how Kitty had messed up our hair. Danny nodded in appreciation but I just grunted, staring out the window in frustration. To be honest, I was close to my breaking point. No one should ever want to be on the receiving end of my breaking point.

When we got back to Amity Park, Mrs. and Mr. Fenton fussed over how long it had taken to get me back from being kidnapped by a ghost. I assured them that I was okay and I let them shine light into my eyes, which proved I wasn't being possessed or overshadowed. I guessed when you're being possessed or overshadowed your pupils don't contract from light? I don't know, but they were satisfied with their proof.

Danny, Sam, and Tucker dragged me upstairs and bombarded me with questions. How often did Johnny kidnap me for Kitty to mess with my hair? How long had I known Kitty? Had Johnny hurt me?

"I'm kidnapped about once every month, I've known Kitty for three years, and no Johnny didn't hurt me." I was back to my shy self, not really liking the questions and very, very self-conscious about giving away too much information about myself. I didn't want them to guess that I was a halfa, not until I was ready to tell them. Knowing my luck, they'd guess it and keep quiet about knowing it until I was ready to tell them. Either that or they'd guess it and try to kill me. I hoped it wasn't the latter.

They seemed to get over the kidnapping quickly, and pretty soon Danny, Sam, and I were egging Tucker on in his game of Snake, since he was trying to break the world record of longest Snake session. We all shouted in exasperation when the game ended just a few precious minutes away from beating the world record. The world record happened to be 87 minutes, and he was just 3 minutes short. He started another game, but he quickly lost and we started sharing stories.

Tucker went first. Surprisingly, he told about a time when he was very little, three or four, and he was going on a cruise with his parents. He found an old, stray, mangy cat and naturally decided it was his new pet and that it needed to come on the cruise with him. So he shoved it into his backpack and when he let it out in his room on the cruise ship, it ran off. He liked to think that one of the crewmen adopted it.

Sam went next. She told about a time when she threw sand in her mother's face for telling her it was time for lunch when she'd only just gone outside. Of course, Sam had been eight and definitely knew better so she was grounded for a month, but, in Sam's own words, "it was totally worth it."

Danny shared the fact that he went to elementary school with someone who looked like me when he lived in Wisconsin before he moved to Amity Park for 2nd grade and up. He said that the child had acted a lot like me too; shy, quiet, kind. He said it totally gave him a sense of deja vu to have met me. I, of course, knew what he was talking about.

"Danny, we went to elementary school together," I told him. "Woodriff Elementary."

"Oh my god. No way." His eyes got wide. "You better not share that one time.."

"Oh, I'm sharing it," I assured him, smirking. "So, as you guys now know, we went to elementary school together. There was this one day after like gym class or something..."

"Oh no," Danny whispered.

"Uh, I don't know what it was, but Danny had like a huge argument with the teacher..."

"Oh no! That wasn't the time I was talking about, but this is worse!" Danny cracked up, the hilariousness of the moment getting to him.

"You remember it now! And uh, when he was coming out of the class he said 'You go on head, I'll see you back at the classroom' and I went to the classroom and it was really weird because I didn't see Danny for like an hour..." I cracked up a bit myself. Danny snorted in laughter, trying to suppress his chuckles. "And suddenly, the principal just came into the classroom and was like 'Uh, Rose, I need to speak with you' and I was like oh god no what have I done. And-and they dragged me over to where the, the bathrooms were by the gym room and he said, 'Your friend Danny has barricaded himself in the stall and we need you to talk him out.'"

"What?" Sam snorted. "What?!"

"So they basically hired me as a hostage negotiator and I was like 'Danny, come out of the bathroom' and he was like 'No...'"

"I don't wanna leave," Danny broke in, still snorting.

"'No, you can't make me,'" I said, imitating Danny's voice poorly.

"No, Ms. Dashen was being mean!"

All four of us broke into laughter, giggling like fangirls at the image of a young Danny barricading himself in the stall of a bathroom.'

"And I was in there- We were in there for like an hour and I finally convinced him to let me in. I go in and Danny's just sitting in the corner all like 'Don't look at me!'"

"Eeehhhh!" Danny grunted, making us all laugh more.

"Oh my god, it was the funniest moment of my life ever. I have never forgotten that. Sorry for not recognizing you sooner, Danny, but for the record I was like 6 or 7, I didn't know your last name, and you look a lot different than you did in 1st grade."

"S'all right," Danny grinned. "But now I know exactly how to blackmail you into never telling those stories again."

"Aw, dude, no. Come on."

So Danny and I ended up in a fit of laughter as we argued about the quality of blackmailing me. Sam and Tucker had to break us up so that Danny could go eat and so that the rest of us could go home. I gave Danny a smirk, mouthed to him, _"I'll tell them all of the funny times when we were younger,"_ and quickly ran from my friend's house. It was nice to know that I had a bit more of a connection with him that I'd initially thought, though I couldn't help but feel a little more comfortable around him when Sam and Tucker were there too.

For once in my life, I felt a little peaceful. Everything was okay so far, though I was definitely going to take a shower when I got home and I was definitely going to re-style my hair and keep an eye out for Johnny 13 next month. But other than getting kidnapped and having my hair messed with, nothing too bad had really happened today. I almost didn't want to stay in my house all by myself. But I reminded myself that I'd see them tomorrow, and with that I stepped inside my house and shut my door on the night, unintentionally shutting something else out as well.

**This took an hour but it was WORTH IT.**


	8. Chapter 8

No matter how long I laid in my bed, I couldn't fall asleep. My stomach churned and I coughed up ectoplasm, the gooey green plasma-like liquid coating my palm. I sparked with electricity, and I could hear the air around me sizzling. It had to be around midnight when my phone went off, getting an incoming call. I checked the caller id and nearly knocked myself out on my bedside table. Danny. Why would Danny be calling me at midnight?

"Yeah, Danny?" My voice sounded sleep-deprived and weak, thanks to all of my coughing.

"I can't sleep. Come over," came his reply.

"What about your parents?" When we were in elementary school, whenever one of us had problems sleeping the other would get up and bug their parents until their parents finally drove them over and then we'd have a sleepover. But we were both 15; weren't we a little too old for sleepovers?

"Come in through the window. It's not like my parents will mind. They adore you."

"Alright, I'll be there soon... You better hope that I can scale your wall. Get the inflatable mattress out."

"Just sleep in my bed with me. Again, it's not like we're doing anything." Beep, beep, beep. Call ended. I sighed and got out of bed, slowly packing a bag so that I'd have clothes to change into tomorrow. Though I couldn't deny that I used to absolutely love snuggling up in Danny's arms as we slept when we were in 1st grade, I didn't see how his bed could possibly accommodate both of us with how big we were now, even with me being an entire foot shorter than Danny. I packed my mp3 player and my headphones, for just in case.

I headed out around 12:30 am, my coat not really on. Instead, I'd just put it around my neck and snapped the first button in to hold it there. Sort of like a cape, but instead with a grey peacoat instead of a bed sheet. When I got to FentonWorks, Danny's bedroom window was open and he was grinning down at me. I rolled my eyes and grumbled about how he was lucky that I hadn't changed in the years we hadn't seen each other, starting the climb up. I nearly fell about halfway up, but my instincts kicked in and I just held on with the barest tips of my fingers. By the time that I got to Danny's window and Danny pulled me in, I was terrified.

"Why did I let you convince me to come over again?" I sighed, closing Danny's window and shrugging off my coat. Danny was still grinning like he'd won the lottery when I turned back to him.

"Because you simply couldn't allow me to suffer through a sleepless night," he answered, pulling me close to him and holding me close as he laid down under his blanket. I blushed, hiding it by curling up against him. So this was how Danny was going to make us both fit on the bed. He was asleep in minutes, and I found that my stomach stopped anxiously churning now that I was here. It seemed that we were both going have a sleepless night if I hadn't come over. Sighing once more, a quietly heavy sigh, I closed my eyes and fell asleep myself. I slept so deeply that I didn't notice my ghost sense go off, nor did I notice Danny get up and leave the house through his window at three.

***line break***

When I woke up, Danny and I were all but tangled in the blanket together. I heard the _snap!_ of a camera, and I blearily looked up to see a ginger-haired girl grinning down at me, waving a blackmail photo in my face, before she escaped the room. Well, Jazz knew I was here now. I tried to wake up Danny so that I could get out of his bed but he simply mumbled something like, "It's Sunday," and clung to me, which made me blush again.

Somehow, I managed to squirm free of Danny's hold and sit up, fixing the blanket over him and trying not to feel guilty when he frowned slightly and tried to find me. My attempts to not feel guilty not really working, I changed out of my white-tiger pajamas into my dark grey jacket, a black T-shirt, and black, thick jeans with rips on the knees and a dark red rose melting in a puddle of red liquid embroidered on one side. The rose I'd embroidered myself, sticking myself with the needles many times before I finished.

30 minutes later, I found myself waiting in Danny's room for him to wake up, just listening to music. _He must have needed a lot more sleep than I did,_ I thought. I turned on a song called "Bubblegum Bitch" by Marina &amp; The Diamonds and listening to it as I waited, singing along very quietly to it as I waited.

_Got a figure like a pin-up, _

_Got a figure like a doll,_

_Don't care if you think I'm dumb,_

_I don't care at all._

_Candy bear, sweetie pie_

_Wanna be adored,_

_I'm the girl you die for._

I felt myself release another small shock of electricity, something that I'd done frequently since I'd become half-ghost. Sometimes, if I focused, I could control the electricity for a few seconds before I lost my hold on it. I hadn't figured out if it was a ghost power of sorts or if it was just the aftermath of being electrocuted.

_I'll chew you up and_

_I'll spit you out_

_Cause that's what young love_

_Is all about._

_So pull me closer_

_And kiss me hard,_

_I'm gonna pop your_

_Bubblegum heart!_

Danny shifted and curled up tighter in his blankets, apparently not ready to be awake yet. I smiled softly and took a mental picture; I'd definitely try to draw that from memory later. I resisted the urge to just reach over and brush his bangs out of his face, instead brushing my own hair with my fingers carefully.

_I'm Miss Sugar Pink,_

_Liquor liquor lips,_

_Hit me with your sweet love,_

_Steal me with a kiss._

_I'm Miss Sugar Pink,_

_Liquor liquor lips,_

_I'm gonna be your _

_Bubblegum bitch._

_I'm gonna be your_

_Bubblegum bitch!_

Danny woke up right about then and sat up, yawning. I paused my music and took my headphones off.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty."

Danny groaned and rolled his eyes, rubbing at them with the back of his hand. "What time is it?"

I checked my mp3 player. "11:30. Good job, you didn't wake up in the afternoon today."

"Oh, hush. Did Jazz snap a blackmail picture earlier?"

"Yeah. I'll have you know, it took me ten minutes just to get out of your bed, you were that intent on keeping me there." I smiled a little, noticing that Danny smiled too.

"That's probably why I woke up so early." We both laughed a little, neither of us too awake. I leaned over and ruffled his hair, chuckling when he batted my hand away. I stood up and left the room so that he could change in privacy, greeting Mrs. Fenton as she left her room.

"Good morning, Mrs. Fenton."

"Rose? When did you come over?" She yawned midway through her sentence.

"Around midnight."

"Of course you did." She smiled and ruffled my own hair, walking away to get breakfast ready. I didn't normally eat in the mornings, so I wouldn't be taking part in breakfast. Not unless someone forced me. Normally, if I ate before 5 hours have passed from when I woke up, I just ended up sick. Danny left his room in his normal clothes; a white shirt with red linings and a red circle in the middle and baggy jeans.

He yawned and pulled me downstairs after him. His iron grip was going to break my wrist. Jazz was already downstairs, reading some sort of psychology book. My ghost sense went off after a little bit, but I hid it by taking a small bite of breakfast (which Danny had decided I had to eat if we were going to do anything at all today), noticing that a similar blue mist came from Danny's mouth. I puzzled over that; Danny wouldn't have a ghost sense if he was human... but if he was a ghost (or at least part ghost), my ghost sense would go off around him.

I planned to figure that out later. For now, I concentrated on eating my breakfast slow enough that I wouldn't cough it up all up later.


	9. Chapter 9

After finally forcing down my breakfast slow enough that I didn't cough it all up, Danny told his parents that we would be at Sam's and then he dragged me out the door, me trying not to fall.

"You couldn't even let me go get my headphones and mp3 player?" I complained to him, to which he smirked and pulled me along faster. Now we were running, me have to sprint to not have my arm dislocated at the elbow and shoulder. We got to Sam's house soon enough, both of us now winded. I suspected that I was much more winded than he was.

Sam's house was more like a mansion, an old-style Gothic building. He knocked on the door and Sam's mother let us in not-too-happily. Apparently, she didn't like Danny and she didn't like the clothing I wore. Sam greeted us happily, though, as happily as she could manage anyway. The goth girl didn't normally show emotions like happy around her parents, I soon learned.

Tucker came over soon after, and we sat around being loud to annoy Sam's parents until we were finally all kicked out and told to go to the park. The park was pretty cool, not many people being there and Amity Park had a warm breeze going. Everything was completely fine until Johnny showed up yet again, but I wasn't prepared for it. He'd already come once this month, and I didn't expect another time until next month. I was chasing Sam around because she'd stolen my phone from me, and I was utterly failing to catch her when my ghost sense went off.

I froze and looked behind myself, yelping and rolling to one side as Johnny tried to grab me.

"Hey!" I shouted, well, I made what passed as a shout for me. "You've already kidnapped me once this month, you're not supposed to come back until next month!"

"Sorry, kid," he smirked, making me think he wasn't sorry at all, "but Kitty wants to ruin your hair again."

"Then tell her that she has to wait until next month." My eyes widened as Johnny came at me again, and I dodged to one side again and ran, climbing right up a tree and settling down on one of the higher branches. I had a poker face, my friends looked utterly disbelieving, and Johnny was racing _straight for the tree._ I expected him to go through it or something, but instead he went up it. Shrieking, I started branch-hopping higher and higher.

"Not fair!" I told Johnny. "But then, neither is this!" Praying I had fast enough reflexes to roll on impact, I jumped right out of the tree from 25 feet up. Johnny had not expected that, though I was pretty sure he thought I just fell and was attempting to do something else like jump up higher or go down the tree or something.

The moment I hit the ground, I felt my right wrist break. Nonetheless, I rolled to keep myself from breaking anything else.

"Just go home, Johnny!" I shouted up to the dumbfounded ghost, crackling with electricity slightly. Danny was looking at me with pure confusion, though I saw concern in his eyes as well. The ghost tried to argue, but I lifted up one hand. I didn't care that my friends were around, I _would_ and _could _and _should_ have shot him with an ecto-ray. Johnny 13 gave me one last look, a look of pure horror at having to face Kitty empty-handed, and he was gone.

***line break***

Sam fretted over my broken wrist, though I kept trying to reassure her that I would be fine. Though I didn't tell her, I'd already started to heal. I contemplated showing them that I was half-ghost, but who knew what they would do then? They could turn me over to Danny's parents, they could try to kill me themselves... All of the "what-if" scenarios played in my head, and I had to force myself not to think about them.

Not until I had proof of any of them happening.

"And you're saying he _never_ shows up twice in one month?" Tucker asked, giving me an _oh-really_ look.

"Never," I confirmed. "Well, sometimes, but not usually in the fall. Kitty doesn't like to mess with my hair in the fall too much because of all the static energy."

"Is that why your hair is always so messy?" Danny chuckled, and I glared at him until he stopped.

"Yes, that just so happens to be the reason that my hair is always like this." I smirked coldly at him. "And it'll be your problem too if you don't stop asking questions."

***line break***

Being at my house all alone, for the first time I could ever remember, made me feel lonely.

I'd always liked being alone. Being alone had always been a comfort to me, the shy little introvert I was. So why didn't I want to be alone now? I felt almost vulnerable now that my friends weren't with me... My ghost sense went off again that day, and I transformed into Shadow to look around. The electrical surge of energy that came through me reminded me that I really shouldn't keep large amounts of energy stored up for so long. I exited my house after finding no ghosts inside, and my ghost sense went off again. I spun around and saw glowing green eyes and white hair watching me, a look of surprise on the ghost's face.

"Phantom?" I squeaked, falling down onto the roof.

"Uh, hey." He sounded just as surprised as I was, and he held out one white gloved hand to me. I hesitantly took it and let him pull me up, hovering just a few centimeters off the roof. "Shadow, right?"

"Uh, y-yes," I whispered, flinching when he frowned.

"Why are you so afraid of me?" he asked, and I could see suspicion on his face. Oh no oh no oh no.

"I-I've never b-been good a-around others," I murmured, not meeting his gaze. My black hair was swept up by the wind, revealing my empty eye socket. I quickly ducked my head down, hiding the burn marks and the missing eye. When the wind died down, I slowly peeked up. I flinched again when I saw his expression of horror.

"Rose?" Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. He knew my human form's name. He knew that I was Rose. Or at least suspected. But how did he know my human form's name?

He took my silence as an answer and dragged me down into my house, and then he took a deep breath. He held onto my shoulders, making sure that I didn't escape, and two twin rings of white formed around his waist. The rings spread in opposite directions and suddenly I wasn't looking into the green eyes of Danny Phantom. I was looking into the blue eyes of Danny _Fenton_.

Trembling, I felt my own purple rings form and transform me back into Rose. Danny was a halfa. He was like me. I didn't have to hide anything form him, and that meant I didn't have to hide anything from Sam and Tucker either. I had the feeling they knew about Danny's secret.

"Rose." His voice took on a serious tone, and I flinched yet again. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Your parents are ghost hunters," I mumbled. "All the what-if scenarios in the world flashed through my head every time I thought about telling you." Now that I knew his secret, I could make the connection between Fenton and Phantom easily, without speculation. They sounded the same, had the same hairstyle, same body type, and this morning I'd seen that Danny had a ghost sense. "Do your parents know that you're a halfa?"

"No. Like you said, they're ghost hunters." I saw a small smile crack on his face. "You do realize that I'll be telling Sam and Tucker? And Jazz too?"

"Jazz?" Confusion etched itself onto my face. Jazz knew about Danny's secret? "I'm not surprised about Sam and Tucker, but... Jazz?"

"She knows my secret and she'll keep yours safe, too," Danny assured me. I nodded in relief and glanced away from him. My house seemed less... frightening in the dark now that Danny was here.

"I saw you use your ghost sense this morning," I told Danny. "I was going to ask you about it, but I knew you'd counter with your own questions..."

"Well," Danny said lightheartedly, "now we know why our ghost senses keep going off around each other." I couldn't help but crack a smile. Danny asked me about my "core", but I told him I didn't know what that was.

"It's what gives you your powers," he told me. "I have an ice core, and I can summon ice to use at my disposal."

"I can sort of control electricity," I mused. I released a shock of electricity again and his hand on my shoulder jerked back. "I just sort of release shocks every once in a while, and if I concentrate I can hold the energy and then release it all at once in a big explosion of electricity."

"Sounds like an electric core," Danny confirmed. "Remind me never to go swimming with you until you can control the shocks." I grinned and nudged Danny.

"Oh, come on. Don't you have faith in me not to electrocute you?"

"Nope."

I rolled my eyes and watched him transform, the process taking only a few seconds. I waved goodbye to Danny, my mind aware that I would have to tell Sam and Tucker that I was a halfa tomorrow morning at school. I had no doubts that Danny would tell Jazz as soon as he got home. Sighing in relief that now I didn't have to hide my powers from my friends, I curled up on my bed, set my alarm just in case I ended up sleeping deeply, I let my mind wander until I was out like a light. Literally.


	10. Chapter 10

Sam and Tucker weren't all that surprised when I told them in the halls of Casper High. Danny had texted them during the night about it, and I smacked him for not telling me he was going to do that. Dash shoved Danny and I into his locker again, and we were actually late for class. Mr. Lancer was immensely upset, but I decided to put his favoritism of me to use.

"Mr. Lancer?" I said sweetly, my one purple eye staring at him abashedly.

"Hm?" He looked at me in fake annoyance; I could see the favoritism in his eyes.

"We were late because I tripped and fell. Don't worry," I said, noticing his look of concern, "I'm okay. I don't need to go to the nurse. But Danny was nice enough to help me catch all of my papers and pick up all of my books. So don't blame him, blame my clumsiness."

And so I managed to get Danny out of a detention. He smiled appreciatively at me as we handed in our homework, and I had to stifle a giggle and a blush. I'd had a small crush on Danny when we were in 1st grade, but now that we were older I wasn't sure if that crush had worn off or only gotten stronger after seeing him again. I was guessing it was the latter, but until I was sure I wouldn't say anything about it.

We spent the period taking notes and passing notes to each other, and we spent our time going from Mr. Lancer's class to Mrs. Rickner's Algebra class avoiding Dash. No need to get into trouble with another teacher. I didn't have Mr. Lancer's favoritism to rely on if we were late to Algebra. Mrs. Rickner taught such complicated math that Danny and I usually gave up trying to understand halfway through. This time, we lasted until the person was almost over and then we gave up.

During lunch, we copied each other's notes and mused about why the ghosts hadn't bothered us yet. Tucker tried to be optimistic by saying that maybe they'd finally given up, but none of us really believed that. I sparked a little when Dash sauntered over to us, his face mutilated with a cocky smirk.

"Hey, Fen_turd_ and _Flower_," he snickered, "who's up for a game of 'Run and hope I don't catch you'?"

"I am," I said, trying not to use my powers against him. "Except you're the one running." I snarled at him and chased him around the cafeteria, swiping my hands at him. He was legitimately running for his life; if I caught him, he knew he was going to get his butt kicked into next year. Danny, Sam, and Tucker were laughing themselves silly at the sight of big bad Dash running away from me. I could have easily caught him if I had thought to use my ghost speed, but I was beyond thinking. I had hit my breaking point and Dash just so happened to be on the receiving end.

Dash must have realized that he could very easily beat me to a pulp, because he tried to turn and do just that. Key word: tried. I crashed into him full speed, not even trying to slow down, and we went down. I punched him in the face three times and escaped back to my table before the teachers came to see what was happening. Dash tried to tell them that I had hit him but, lucky for me, none of the teachers really believed that a kid as tiny and shy as me could do such a thing.

Dash spent the whole Gym period avoiding me like I had an incurable disease that was highly contagious. The less contact with him, the better.

After school, on my way home with my friends, Dash cornered me and challenged me to a rematch. I shrugged and put on my headphones, turning on the song I had been listening to while Danny was asleep yesterday. This time, I mumbled the lyrics to myself as I spun and danced to the song, avoiding Dash easily. I even blew a kiss from my hand to him, at which point he blushed furiously and tried to hit me more.

Not that I liked the blonde jock. I didn't even like him in general; I was just teasing him. Every time he touched me, he got shocked. It was hard to time the shocks that way, but it was fun. Right before the song ended, I twisted out of the way just as Dash tried to ram me and he ended up knocking himself out. I chuckled, only for Danny to grab my hand and lift me up by my wrist, chuckling at my plight. He was in ghost form and thus my little shocks weren't really working on him. I struggled and eventually got myself free, landing lightly.

I hadn't gotten even a hint of a ghost around today. It was Monday, the worst day of the week, so why hadn't anything gone wrong today? Of course, as soon as that thought crossed my mind my ghost sense went off. I changed into my ghost form quickly and flew up to hover next to Danny, who was trying to find out what ghost was here now. A terrible thought hit me and I looked behind us. I froze, which alerted Danny. He grabbed my arm and dove to one side, pulling me along with him as one of Skulker's rockets went past us.

We fought him, ignoring the crowd of citizens who were gathering underneath us watching the fight. When Danny had sucked Skulker back into the Fenton Thermos, we finally noticed the citizens. There was even a news reporter there who shouted questions to us. We came down from the sky a little, hovering just five feet above the people.

"Phantom, Phantom, is that your new friend?" the reporter asked. Danny glanced at me and I answered for him.

"A-Actually, we've known each o-other since elementary s-school," I whispered. The crowd grew quiet and I had to repeat what I said. I hated answering questions.

"Ghosts go to school?" one citizen asked. I panicked.

"No," Danny quickly answered, "back when we were alive we went to the same school."

"How recently did you die?" another person asked.

"We're not answering that," we said in union, and we shared a glance of relief.

"Are you partners?" the reporter asked, his camera still recording us and probably streaming us live.

"I guess you could say that?" I wheedled, trying to make them lose interest in asking us questions.

"Is it romantic or-" We cut the reporter off.

"Not at all! We're just friends!" We both blushed and glanced away from each other. Our blushes were tinted green with ectoplasm.

"Do you two live together?" someone else questioned.

"Yes!" I answered quickly. "We've recently met up again and we live together."

"Where?" the reporter pressed. Danny and I shared a glance and Danny took it into his own hands.

"We live all over Amity Park," he told the reporter. "We never stay in one place for too long but we occupy plenty of abandoned houses. We don't stay in one place so that we won't get found." Danny glanced up at the sky as though checking his watch. "Oh, would you look at the time! We've gotta go!" Danny grabbed my arm and we went invisible, heading back to the place where Sam and Tucker were waiting.

Going back to our human forms, we ran from the scene towards my house. It was the closest place to the school without running past the mob of citizens, and we did need to do our homework. Once there, Danny and I sighed.

"Danny, something tells me that we're going to have to be careful if we're going to fight ghosts together. Or else people are going to start rumors about our ghost forms dating."

"I hear you, Rose. I hear you."


	11. Chapter 11

**Thank you to those who reviewed! I've edited the summary to address that this is, in fact, a boy x boy fanfiction. Rose is indeed male. I know, I know, he has a girl name. However, he was originally going to be transgender before I decided that I didn't know enough about transgenders to write him as one without offending anyone. Then he was going to be female, but I liked the idea of him being male. The name is all that's left of those two ideas. There was your fun fact for the day, guys 3**

That's how things were until the middle of the school year. Getting stuffed into lockers by Dash, fighting ghosts with Danny, sharing my homework and notes with Sam, Tucker, and Danny. Sometimes when Danny and I had finished fighting, we would be forced to answer questions about ourselves and about other things. Other times, we would have to run from Danny's parents. I never again did fight Dash, though; the jock stopped trying to pick a fight with me and instead spent his time trying to shove me into lockers or trying to take his bad grades out of me or Danny.

Until the middle of the school year, that is.

That was when Mrs. Tetslaf switched us over to Health class in place of Gym, and that was also when Danny was switched into my class. Sam and I were particularly pleased about that; now we got to share our Health notes with him because he was in our level. Mrs. Tetslaf went over what we would be covering over the course of Health. Pregnancy, hormones, adolescence, an egg baby project...

Wait, project?! We would have to take care of one or two eggs for an entire week, and our grade would be based on if the eggs stayed safe. If one or both of the eggs cracked, we would have to fill out an "egg-baby accident report" which basically meant a piece of paper explaining what happened. She explained that we wouldn't be doing this project for a few more weeks, and that we would not be allowed to pick our own partners. Just about everyone groaned, but Danny, Sam, and I weren't worried. Whoever we got paired up with would have to deal with it.

Okay, I was worried a little bit. I barely knew anyone besides Danny, Sam, and Tucker and I did not want to be paired up with Dash. I'd rather be paired up with snooty, shallow, miss perfect (aka Paulina) than be paired up with Dash. Mrs. Tetslaf made sure that we all knew that some of the pairings would be with the same gender because there were more boys in this class than girls. A few of the boys poked fun at each other, snorting about how a boy might get paired up with another boy, but personally I didn't mind that.

Throughout the school year, I had slowly figured out that no, my crush on Danny had not gone away since I hadn't seen him in a long time. I still wasn't sure if the feelings were platonic or romantic, though. I did see Danny as a bit of an older brother, him being older than me by five months. But at the same time, I saw Danny as someone to love romantically. It was confusing, so I decided to put my feelings off to the side for the sake of our friendship. If Danny found out that I had a crush on him, I wasn't sure how he would take it. It was better to play it safe than sorry.

Sam knew, though. She was the one who had figured out that my crush had not gone away. I'd told her about the crush when she had decided to stay over my house for dinner while her parents argued since she really had nothing better to do. She had suggested that the crush had gotten stronger, but I hadn't really believed it until I found myself blushing whenever Danny called me to tell me that he couldn't sleep. Since then, we had tried to figure out together if my feelings were platonic or not. Sam was leaning towards "not platonic" while I was trying to find out how far my feelings went for him.

The bell rung, and the three of us got up from our desks and walked out. Sam was making jokes about getting paired up with Dash, who was afraid of catching "the goth disease" when my ghost sense went off. Next to me, Danny released his own puff of blue mist. Before we could hide, the Box Ghost appeared and proclaimed himself a threat.

"Oh, it's just you," I sighed. "You scared me, don't do that. I thought something dangerous was after us."

"I am dangerous!" he shouted. "I am the Box Ghost, and you will face the wrath of my dangerous boxes of cardboard!"

"Yeah, yeah," Danny snorted. He opened up his thermos and sucked the Box Ghost in, the Box Ghost saying that he would get his revenge. Once he was in the thermos, Danny sighed. "Alright, let's get to class. Tuck's probably wondering where we are." The raven-haired boy smiled and set off, forcing me and Sam to run after him. He really was getting tall; he was already two inches taller than he was at the beginning of the school year. I'd gotten a little taller as well, just an inch. At the rate we were growing, Danny would end up being so much taller than me.

***line break***

After school, Tucker came with Danny and Sam to my house. He didn't normally do that, as I'd started keeping cats and he was allergic to them. He liked the kittens that one of the female cats had had a month or two ago, though; They were short-hair, didn't shed when the climbed all over him, and he had no allergy issues with them. He'd tried to convince his mother to let him have one of them, but his mother did not approve of having pets.

Instead, whenever he was feeling up to it, he came to my house despite all the allergy risks and spent time with them there. There were three; a little black and white she-cat, a big bulky smokey grey tabby tom, and a tiny white she-cat who didn't spend much time outside of the box her mother slept in. I kept trying to coax her out but she only played for a little while before she slept again. I was sure she was sick, but I wasn't sure if I was old enough to schedule a vet appointment like I scheduled my doctor's appointments. I scheduled one for the kitten anyway and just lied about my age; I said I was 16, not 15. The appointment was in a few days.

Speaking of doctor's appointments...

"Oh no, guys!" I gasped. "I've got a doctor's appointment - I've gotta run! I totally forgot... You guys can let yourselves into my house, I should be back in an hour or so!"

"We're coming with you!" Sam shouted, running after me. Together, all four of us ran to the doctor's clinic and I signed myself in 10 minutes before my appointment at 3. Victorious, I sighed in relief and slumped down in the waiting room, the running having completely tired me out.

"So, what's the doctor appointment for?" Danny whispered to me, as Tucker had a fear of hospitals. I was surprised he had even come with us, but I supposed that he didn't feel like going home or waiting for us to come back.

"My eye," I responded quietly; since I was normally quiet, Danny had to make me repeat what I said so that he could hear it. "You know, since it's perpetually open they want to make sure it doesn't get infected, even though this happened years ago and the wound has dried out by now."

Danny nodded thoughtfully, and he looked like he wanted to follow me in when the doctor called my name. I let him do his examination, answering his questions in short, clipped answers.

"Any pain around the area?"

"No."

"Have you gotten sick recently?"

"No." I didn't count coughing up ectoplasm as "sick".

"Does it hurt when I rub the burn?"

"No."

I let the man peer at my eye socket, I let him wipe a swab around inside of it to check for infection. I let him do everything he needed to do with no fuss, just a surly look that I didn't often have. I might not have feared the hospital, but I sure as hell hated the place.

"Well, then," the doctor said cheerfully, finding nothing wrong with me, "if you start feeling sick or if the socket starts to hurt, come back and we'll look you over again. Otherwise, you should come back sometime in August."

"Okay." I left his office, scheduled another appointment with the receptionist for August 2nd at 12:30 PM, and left. I never once mentioned what went on in that doctor's office, and my friends were smart enough not to ask.

***line break***

I couldn't sleep. Something just didn't feel right in the pit of my stomach. I rolled out of bed, groaning with pain, and promptly threw up ectoplasm out the window. I was cold, despite my space heater.

"Ugh," I groaned, coughing up yet more ectoplasm. However, this time there was blood mixed in. I knew now what was wrong; I had the ecto-flu. I'd had this a few times before, but never this bad. I could barely get up and stumble back to my bed, and I had no way of checking my temperature. If I were to guess, though, I'd expect it to be somewhere in the 110's. I fumbled with my phone and called Sam, taking a drink of water while I waited for her to pick up.

"Rose?" her sleepy voice answered, and I nearly sighed in relief. I shouldn't have doubted that she'd answer.

"Sam," I coughed, "I've got the ecto-flu. I won't be at school tomorrow; do you think you could..."

"Get your papers for you and drop them off?" she finished for me. "Yeah. Is it contagious to humans?" She was a little more awake now, alerted that I was sick.

"No, it's not contagious to humans... only to those who have ghost essence..." I coughed and leaned out of my window again, blood dripping from my mouth.

"Alright. See you around 3," she whispered, and then she hung up. I sighed in pain as my stomach churned, refusing to let me sleep. Instead, for the rest of the night I stayed near my window so that I wouldn't get my room messy. I finally fell asleep around 8 am, Sam sending me a text telling me she'd told Mr. Lancer why I wasn't in. I sent her a quick text of thanks before I felt my stomach give another heave. The ecto-flu would be gone by tomorrow; I'd have to clean my entire house after this so that I didn't get sick right afterwards again...

I coughed up more blood and dragged myself back to my bed. Today was going to last forever...


	12. Chapter 12

**Thank you for your reviews, guys! Though, I am vaguely confused. Guest, I am confused about your review. You're the one who clicked on my fanfic, and yet when you review you say, "T.F.I.T.S". For those who are wondering, it's pretty much a "wtf", as my helpful friend TheAlbinoPhoenix informed me. If you didn't like the fanfic, you don't have to read it. Please don't review negatively unless you're giving me constructive criticism. To hollowwind, Rose is male. I stated this in the previous chapter, but I know that some people don't read author's notes so I don't really mind. **

**Just a reminder, this ****_is_**** a boy x boy fanfic. If you don't like that, you don't have to read it. Hope you guys enjoy the chapter!**

I laid in bed for I didn't know how long before I had to pull myself out of bed to cough out the window. Nothing came up this time. I sat there at the window, all of my energy drained. I didn't even have the energy to spark anymore, though I wasn't surprised. Ecto-flu is known for sapping energy. I must have fallen asleep at the window, because I woke up to someone carrying me back to bed. I didn't bother opening my eyes, and I couldn't tell who it was. I hoped it wasn't Danny. Amity Park couldn't afford to have Danny get the ecto-flu. Not while I was sick too. And what would his parents say if they knew that their son got a ghost-only sickness?

I felt someone's soft fingers brush my sweaty hair away from my face, though they didn't uncover my eye. This person had to be Sam, then. Sam wouldn't have let Danny come to my aid; she would have stopped him because Amity Park couldn't be left defenseless... right?

"Rose, you'll be okay," a strong voice reassured me, and I mewled a little.

Of course it had to be Danny.

"Danny," I whined. "Y-you'll get... s-sick..." I had to take deep breaths in between my words. I felt Danny's grip shift to hold me better. My comforter touched my back, and I felt Danny pull it over me to keep me warm.

"I know," came Danny's answer. "But you need me right now. You're sick. You'd take care of me if I had a contagious ghost sickness, even if you'd probably get sick too." I couldn't argue with that. I probably would. So I settled for an exhausted pout and opened my eye halfway, halfheartedly glaring at him. His fuzzy form made the semblance of a grin which turned to a concerned frown as I passed out.

***line break***

When I woke up, all I could think was _I'm cold. _I was absolutely freezing despite my comforter. I whined in pain from my stomach and made to roll out of bed, but a set of warm hands stopped me.

"Here, Rose, take an antacid." Sam's voice. Had Danny left then? Or had I simply imagined his voice? Maybe I had ended up dragging myself back to my bed and having a dream about Danny taking care of me. It was certainly possible. Just as I took the chewable tablet in my mouth and swallowed it, someone else entered the room.

"Is he okay, Sam?" Danny's voice was muffled, as though he was wearing a hospital mask. Knowing Sam, he probably was. I whimpered in pain as my stomach churned a little, and I actually hiccuped. I hadn't hiccuped since before the accident that made me half-ghost, not needing to breathe often enough to warrant hiccuping.

"He's fine, Danny," came Sam's exasperated voice. Danny had, apparently, asked this question too many times. "Stop worrying. This is just the ghost version of the flu; it should only be a 24 hour bug. He'll be _fine._"

I could feel Danny's awkwardness, and I guessed that Danny had admitted something to Sam while I was unconscious. Or perhaps Sam had caught him doing something. Either way, I didn't really care. My stomach stopped churning and I made a small sigh of relief. Sam tipped me back onto my bed, where I curled up with my comforter to try to get warm again.

"How is he _cold?_" Danny wondered aloud. "The heater is up all the way, this room is like a sauna!"

"Flu," I mumbled, and Sam put her hand on my forehead. She immediately yanked it back and hurried away; I could hear her boot clanking on the wooden floorboards. She came back with a thermometer, which she forced into my mouth even though I resisted.

"He's got a temperature of 113.43 Fahrenheit," Sam whispered in fear. I wanted to reassure her that it was normal; I wanted to tell her that my fever really was a small fever, that my temperature was higher than other ghosts' temperatures. But I just couldn't make the words form. Instead, I sparked a little.

"He must be feeling better if he can spark," Danny said, relief evident in his voice. "Earlier, he was so tired that not even one little jolt was in his body."

"Only you would know that, Danny," my goth friend teased. "After all, you were all cuddled up to him earlier..."

I cracked my eye open, wanting to see Danny's reaction, but even though my room was completely dark, my eye still hurt. I moaned in pain and closed it again, curling up further.

"We should let him sleep," came Sam's voice, fading out of my hearing. "He must be tired from fighting the ecto-flu..." I heard Danny start to say something, but by then I was too far on the way to a peacefully dreamless sleep to hear him.

***line break***

I woke up around 3 am to my stomach churning anxiously. I cried out in distress and fumbled my way blindly to my window. I had to open it again, and by that time ectoplasm was dripping onto the floor. Oh well... I'd clean it up later. I spat out the green goo and simply leaned against my window, taking big shuddering breaths. Making my way back to my bed using just my arms to drag myself, I realized that I had no extra energy for getting back onto my bed.

I heard someone enter my room and I turned blindly to them, my remaining eye still closed. I heard a soft cluck of disapproval and this person picked me up and put me back onto the bed. They stood there for a moment, as though trying to decide what to do. Then they left the room and returned with something, which they placed right next to my bed. I promptly spat ectoplasm into it, and I felt a smooth hand roughly brushing my hair back.

"Don't worry, Rose," Sam said softly. I opened my eye and was relieved to find that I could focus on her for a little bit before I had to close my eye again. "Danny and I are still here. I'll be back in an hour or two to check on you." I heard her leave the room softly, and I found myself wondering where they were sleeping. Sam and Danny were probably in the living room, but I didn't own any inflatable mattresses. Were they simply sitting on the couch worrying? I hoped not.

I heard the door open again after an hour or two, just like Sam had promised, during which I had coughed more ectoplasm and blood into the bucket. At least, I assumed it was a bucket. I couldn't see it quite right, not with the blurry vision of my fever.

"Hey, Rose," came Danny's voice. I found myself stressing over how tight and distraught his voice was. "Are you feeling any better?" His voice was still muffled, so he must have still been wearing the hospital mask over his mouth.

I shook my head no, then hesitated and nodded yes. I was feeling a little better, but not by much. This 24 hour bug was turning out to last longer than it had before. It must have been a new strain; just like human illnesses, ghost illnesses adapted and changed to be able to infect ghosts whose immune systems (whatever they had left of one) were protected against it. However, just like human illnesses, once the ghost had the strain of illness they hardly ever got it again until the sickness adapted again.

"Sorta, huh," my raven-haired crush said weakly with relief. "Do you feel well enough to keep food down? You might feel better once you eat something..."

"N-No," I murmured. "W-Water, though..." I made a small sigh as I finished speaking. My throat hurt a lot, and I would be grateful for something to drink. I heard Danny leave the room with the bucket, and then come back. He set the bucket back down, now clean of blood and ectoplasm, and he held something glass to my lips. A cup of water.

I let him tip the glass to pour the water into my mouth a few sips at a time; he was afraid of accidentally making me choke. I sighed as the pain in my throat subsided, and the pain in my stomach even decreased. He must have set the glass on my nightstand, because I felt him crawl on all fours into my bed to curl up beside me.

"Sam had to go home," Danny whispered to me. "She promised to be back later. I told my parents that you were sick and that you needed me to take care of you; they made me ask Sam to bring my schoolwork here after school let out."

I smiled a little and curled up tightly in my comforter. I heard him say a quiet goodnight even though it was probably 6 am by now before I fell asleep. And I can't say that I didn't enjoy the fact that Danny was in my bed with me.

**Oho, I gave Rose a little break from being tortured this chapter besides the whole sick thing. I'll have to fix that next chapter.**


	13. Chapter 13

**Thank you guys for your awesome reviews!**

By the time I woke up again, Danny was gone. There was a sheet of crumpled paper next to my bed on my nightstand, and I struggled to read it. _Had to go home, parents were getting worried. Will be back later with flu medicine and food. -Danny_

I groaned at the last part. Food? I didn't feel well enough to keep down even bread, let alone anything he might bring. At least I wasn't coughing up ectoplasm 24/7 now. I heard someone enter my house through my window and opened my eye again, expecting to see Danny. Instead, I saw an old friend.

"Hi, Rose!" the pink-haired boy beside me chirped brightly. His green eyes glowed, almost ghostly. My friend had an insane smile on his face, a smear of refused medicine coating his cheek.

"Hey, Kit," I croaked. Kit's smile wavered at my obvious weakness, but it remained strong as he crushed me in a hug. He released me pretty soon, though, allowing me to cough ectoplasm into the bucket beside my bed. He patte dmy hair awkwardly, as though the atmosphere of my being sick was too much for his naturally happiness. "Finally break out of the insane asylum again? It's been a good two years since I last saw you." I panted and coughing between my words.

Kit's face lit up. "Mhm!" he purred, burrowing into my blankets next to me. As he bent to do this, a blue-haired ghost behind him anxiously peered out the window. "It took a long time to find you! Cobalt will tell you! I'm not good with time."

Cobalt glanced at me guiltily. "Neither of us are, Kit. But it's been at least a month or two." Sirens wailed outside and Cobalt sighed. "Come on, Kit, time to keep running."

"Already?" Kit pouted. "But we just got here!" He gives me an apologetic grin, and he mock-salutes me. Then he grabbed the ghost's hand and jumped out the window, deterring multiple officials from entering my house. I could hear him laughing crazily as he run for nearly an hour.

Kit and Cobalt were long-time friends of mine. Whenever I was angry with the world as a child, they would sit and listen. Kit would twitch and make me smile; Cobalt would remain a statue until he had time to give me advice. They were twins. They did everything together. But then everything changed. Freshly created ghosts and spirits (the difference between them being that spirits have no ectoplasm) were naturally attracted to the twins; they were never left alone.

They loved their job. They helped ghosts and spirits move on, just by listening to their problems. However, in a terrible car accident, Cobalt died. Kit was the only survivor of the crash, and he was mentally traumatized. He escaped the crash with only a faint cut to the forehead, or so everyone thought. The day his twin died was the day his mind broke. He went crazy. The hospital staff found him clutching the broken remains of his twin to his chest, sobbing. Cobalt, whose bitter regret at leaving his brother all alone made him a ghost instead of a spirit, reappeared and refused to move on. He vowed to protect his brother, and so far he did a good job of that.

No one save for ghosts could see Cobalt. He was like a guardian angel. People became concerned for Kit's mental health and he was admitted to an insane asylum. Cobalt followed him there and since then, he'd broken out over a thousand times. Kit was older than I was, bordering on 22. His birthday was in March. Cobalt had aged with his brother, probably the mental link between Kit and himself doing it.

Sometimes, I forgot that Cobalt was dead. Sometimes, Cobalt himself forgot he was dead. It didn't matter what we remembered, though; Kit never got over the fact that his twin had died. Kit was forgetful, that much was true; the only thing he could never forget was how his twin had died in the crash that should have killed them both.

***line break***

I had no idea how long I stared at my ceiling, trying to fall asleep again without success, before I heard someone enter the room.

"Are you feeling better, Rose?" Sam asked, brushing my hair out of my remaining eye. I smiled at her and sat up a little, wincing as the action started up a coughing fit.

"Yeah, a little better," I rasped to Sam, reaching a hand forward to take my pile of papers from her hand. "Would you help me catch up with the rest of the class?"

Sam smiled with relief and helped me do the papers, which I complained over and I even threatened to look up if giving this much homework was legal. It suddenly occurred to me that today was Friday; I'd missed three days of school.

"Sam, did I miss any important projects in the three days I've been sick?"

"No," came her quick answer. After a moment, she relented and said, "Actually, yes. It was a group work of fiction about whatever we could think of for Lancer. We, Danny and I, decided to write about you having the ecto-flu, because no one believes that ghosts can get sick. You're in our group, so don't worry. Mr. Lancer said that doing a cross-class group was perfectly okay, too, which is cool. I wish the other teachers would let us do stuff like that."

I nodded in thought, and we continued working for an hour before Danny peeked his head and grinned widely at the sight of me sitting up in bed and doing work. He entered the room and sat on my other side, ruffling my hair and saying he always knew I would get better. Sam whispered into my ear that Danny had been worrying the most and had been the one to panic over the thought that I might not get better.

***line break***

On Monday, I was determined to do something other than lay in bed like an invalid. I'd done that all weekend and now I was bored. I actually missed going to school; I'd slept a lot in the three days I was sick, and my energy levels were rising to the point that I might start slipping. So I forced myself to get out of bed, I forced myself to get dressed, and I forced myself to walk to school. Danny was immediately and obviously worried that I had turned up to school barely on time, and even Mr. Lancer seemed a little concerned for my health.

I shivered through the entire school day, my vision blurry again. However, I turned in all of my papers that day which I considered to be a win. I coughed on Dash, who complained that I might get him sick and went to stuff Mikey in his locker, of whom I let out as soon as Dash had left the hall. Even Mikey was aware that I wasn't my normal self; I snapped at him when he tried to suggest that I go to the nurse. I was never so irritable in my life.

Later on, during lunch, I apologized to Mikey and told him I was just sick of being told that I should go to the nurse. He nodded hesitantly but accepted my apology wholeheartedly. I thought he was desperate to believe that I was just tired, not actually sick. I thought everyone was hoping that, actually. Even Tucker looked like he was hoping that I was just tired.

Danny had to help me walk home because by the end of the day, I was completely devoid of energy. I tried to refuse his help, squirming out of his hold only to stagger. I tried to insist that I was fine; he said nothing the entire way home, his lips in a tight, thin line. He was worried over my behavior, and he was worried that I was only getting worse.

When we got to my home, I nearly collapsed onto the couch, shivering horribly. I was cold all over again, and Danny felt my forehead and cursed. It occurred to me that I'd never heard him curse. He wrapped me up and tried to get me to lay down when I insisted on doing my homework. I refused to get behind again.

***line break***

I didn't remember falling asleep, but when I woke up Danny's head was resting on my shoulder. I realized that I needed to get dressed for school and tried to shift away from Danny; Danny mumbled something and wrapped on arm around me, holding me securely to his side. Blushing, my foggy mind realized that this was the calmest I had been since I'd gotten sick.

I wanted to keep it that way, but of course my wants would go unanswered as time went on.


	14. Chapter 14

**To the guest who reviewed that this story makes them smile, you're welcome. :)**

As time went on, I became faintly aware that I was not well.

This may have been obvious to other people, but my mind had been cloudy ever since I had "gotten over" the ecto-flu. I sat in my living room now, Kit and Cobalt talking to my friends. I had been tied to a chair so that I wouldn't attack anyone from the silent and undetectable rage the sickness caused me.

"See," Kit explained, looking over his shoulder every few moments as though he expected to get captured again, "the sickness disguises itself as ecto-flu but is much worse. For starters, it lasts about three days and causes the victim to cough up a lot of ectoplasm and blood. A regular ecto-flu would only cause you to cause up ectoplasm and only lasts one day, if that." Kit checked over his shoulder again, twitching impatiently. "The sickness feeds off of negative emotions and makes them worse. After a month or two, the sickness will kill them. This is very dangerous for halfas like Rose and you, Danny."

Danny looked surprised, but Kit held up a hand to stop him. Cobalt answered Danny's unsaid questions. "Kit has ways of knowing things. Don't ask about it, because the answer will really only bring on more questions."

Kit continued on his expert explanation of the sickness. I was slowly starting to realize more about the sickness myself, and I suddenly detected all the changes in my body the sickness had created. I got angry so easily... I went right to violence... I was almost always at my breaking point...

"The sickness can kill a halfa and make them a complete ghost. But the sickness doesn't go away if this happens. It latches onto the new ghost, and the new ghost will continue to be sick until they eventually wither away as well." Kit looked over his shoulder again. "There's only one way to beat the sickness."

Kit looked nervous now, and Sam hissed at him to tell them the cure. He flinched, looking like a scolded child, but he told them the cure anyway.

"It's not a cure. It takes a while... but you either have to keep his emotions positive, or you have to keep him emotionless. Without negative emotions to feed on, the sickness will die. How long has he had this sickness?"

"A week, not counting the ecto-flu disguise." Danny looked worried, far more worried than Sam or Tucker did.

"Then you have to keep him happy or emotionless for another week." Kit checked over his shoulder once more, sighing at the alarms of the insane asylum looking for him. "I've gotta go. Don't forget what I said!" And then he and Cobalt were gone, and my friends were the only ones there. They each looked worried, and Danny reached a hand out to touch my shoulder. I growled at him, but my growling ceased the moment he touched me. Instead, I felt calm.

"Danny... how are you calming him like that?" Tucker sounded amazed. Danny didn't seem to realize he was calming me, because a confused expression comes over his face and he pulls away, leaving me snarling again.

"I don't... I wasn't..." He takes in my angry expression, which was just peaceful a moment ago, and he slowly untied the ropes. He made sure to brush his hand over the back of my neck the moment I was free, which really complicated the plans that my foggy mind had created. It was hard to go from leaping up in anger to sudden calmness and I fell, hitting my head.

***line break***

It was Thursday. My friends had deduced that as long as Danny was nearby, I wouldn't go into fits of anger because his influence on me was far stronger than the influence of the sickness that tried to make my rage stronger. It was put to the ultimate test when Dash tried to pick on us for holding hands in the hall, though it wasn't really holding hands. Not that I would have minded. Danny had my jacket sleeve, and his hand was just barely touching me. But it was enough.

I wanted to snarl and leap for Dash's throat, I really did. But on the other hand. I also wanted to stay so close to Danny. In the end, Danny's influence won. Partially. As Dash snickered and walked past, I stuck my leg out and tripped him out of malevolence. I glared at him as I was dragged away to my last class of the day, baring my teeth before Danny's influence won out again and I focused my attention on him. After class, Dash tried to make another remark. That time, my sickness's influence won.

I snarled and, tearing myself away from Danny's grip, pounced on Dash's unsuspecting form. Anyone would have thought that he would have left me alone since all I did for the past week before we found out the cure for the sickness was growl at him and chase him around in a furious rage. But apparently not. I managed to give Dash a nosebleed before Danny pulled me off of Dash, and the effect of his touch was immediate. I panted and slumped down, suddenly exhausted and completely unable to fathom why. I'd felt so full of wrathful energy when I was attacking Dash. What happened?

I, too, had a nosebleed. I was lucky that Danny managed to notice it before anyone else and he held a tissue to my nose to hide the ectoplasm that was leaking out with the blood. Dash was given three detentions for instigating the fight, as Danny had an invisible duplicate overshadow the two people who were called in to testify that our story was true. In a way, it was. Dash had been the one to provoke me. But I had been to first one to attack.

Danny ended up having to carry me home. My leg had been badly injured in the fight, and I hadn't noticed it before my energy had vanished. Of course, we couldn't have a peaceful walk home. No, Skulker decided to show his face again. The mere moment I saw his face, the calmness that Danny had been influencing onto me disappeared. Not because I was angry at Skulker, but because Danny had put me down to turn into Phantom. I watched through blurry vision, not really feeling any emotion in particular until Skulker hurt Danny by smashing him into the concrete. Then I saw red.

Literally. Some of Danny's blood splashed onto my face, and I was momentarily blinded. But that didn't matter. Filled with savagery, I turned into Shadow and attacked Skulker. I didn't remember most of what happened. One moment, I was seeing Danny hit the ground. The next, I was sucking a badly destroyed Skulker into the Fenton Thermos. I was fuming over Danny's injuries, though he reassured me that he was going to be okay, that he'd taken worse. He decided that turning back to human was a much worse alternative to flying me home, so he did just that. Someone asked what was wrong with me. Danny answered that I was sick and shouldn't have been fighting Skulker.

Maybe I shouldn't have been. But I stood by my decision, because in the split second between Danny hitting the ground and me going to attack Skulker I had realized something. In that split moment, I hadn't waited for the sickness to make a decision for me. I had made my own decision. I had decided to be furious rather than horrified. I had decided to attack Skulker because I was the one to decide my emotions, not the sickness.

In the split second before the sickness could decide on my emotion, I had decided for it.

***line break***

When I woke up, I was feeling so much better than I recently had. The undetected pain that the sickness had been causing me, the silent rage that made me attack, was gone. Danny wasn't next to me, and I knew this for a fact because I got up and searched for him frantically. I fell out of bed and Danny came running, having been talking to Sam and Tucker in the living room. Tucker was tolerating his allergies only because he knew that I needed him, however much the sickness insisted that I didn't.

Danny soothed me and tried to make me sleep again but I refused and painstakingly stood up, getting changed and stumbling downstairs. Sam and Tucker stopped talking the moment they saw me, and their faces lit up with relief. Did they think that I wouldn't have been able to get up again? What time was it?

I checked my clock and narrowed my eyes.

"You should all be in bed," I rasped, "it's 11:30 on a school night."

"No, Rose," Sam said gently. "It's Friday night. You slept completely through today."

I froze, horror and dread filling my body. I'd slept. For an entire day. How had I been so tired? I shivered, a little cold, and Danny wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.

"Sorry," Danny said, rubbing his neck awkwardly like he did when he was nervous or apologizing, "but you seemed to be calmer when we kept the temperature down."

I nodded slowly, trying to process what he was saying.

"You did wake up a few times during the day, but you mostly babbled with fever. Your fever broke pretty quick, but we all stayed here to take care of you. You... you didn't act like yourself." Tucker looked away, embarrassed. I only nodded again, settling down on the couch. Danny sat down between me and Sam, and I stared distantly at the wall.

"Your friend came by today, the pink-haired one and his twin ghost." I looked at Sam, not really interested. "He said that you're getting better a lot faster than you should be, what with how long you've had this sickness." I blinked, and realized that it had to be Danny's influence on me before she even spoke the sentence. "Kit says that it's Danny. Since Danny's a halfa too, he naturally has a stronger influence on you that anyone else would, even a full ghost. Of course, then he had to run to make sure that he didn't get caught by the asylum."

I smiled, a genuine smile, for the first time in a week. Maybe everything wouldn't be so bad. I was getting better quickly. I felt more in control of my emotions than I had recently. And the way Danny acted around me... did Danny like me the way I liked him?


	15. Chapter 15

By the time I had fought off the sickness, it was Friday again. I didn't want to pull myself out of bed, but I forced myself to. The good news was that I no longer hurt everywhere. The bad news was that the ghosts had decided to torment me again and now about three of my ribs were half-mended after being broken the night before. I still hadn't confessed to Danny, trying to piece together my feelings and trying to find evidence that he liked me the same way I liked him. I didn't want my heart to get shattered by his rejection. I could take a cracked heart, one that would come from never being with him. But a shattered one would kill me.

Dash tried to instigate another fight that morning, but I was in control of my emotions now. The sight of him didn't send me into a flurry of attacks. Instead, I just mumbled a helpless, frightened apology and hurried away. I didn't even notice that Danny was trying to grab hold of my hand. He managed to take hold of it in class, and his rough hand caressed my soft one. Briefly, I wondered if my hand was too soft for him. He thumbed the back of my hand and I fought my blush, ultimately losing. I tightened my grip on his hand just a little. Just enough that he felt it.

At lunch, when Danny went to go throw out his trash, Sam hammered me on why Danny was holding my hand up until now. I blushed and, flustered, tried to tell her that he was just being cautious because the sickness might be hanging around still. She raised one eyebrow but didn't push me further, as Danny was coming back now. Her expression told me everything that I needed to know; she would be pestering me about this next period, and she wasn't giving up until she got an answer.

Danny took hold of my hand again and just held it. He was either oblivious to my blush or pretending that he didn't see it. But I know what I saw. I saw a rather pleased look on his face, and as he talked with Tucker it felt to me like they were using code words. I narrowed my eyes at Sam, who smiled deviously and began writing down something.

"Hey, Rose, could you look over this for me?" she asked innocently, acting as though it was that essay that Mr. Lancer wanted by the end of the week.

"Sure, Sam," I agreed happily, and I took the paper from her. So she knew about the code words, it seemed. I read over the paper, smiling innocently. I used a red pen to circle certain words and I pretended to make spelling corrections and suggestions to others, and neither of the other boys were even paying attention. Danny thumbed the back of my hand again and I squeezed it just a little, just enough that he'd know I'd felt it.

_D: I think he likes me back._

_T: No kidding, dude. He has to fight off a blush every time you do anything at all. He's definitely into you._

_D: Yeah, I noticed. His hand is actually pretty soft. I wonder if mine is too tough for him._

_T: Probably not, or else he'd have complained about it by now._

_D: Not if he likes me back. He'd probably bear it just to hold my hand._

_T: Probably. _

I shook my head and stifled a laugh, though it came out as a giggle. Danny thought too highly of himself. I'd have complained about his hand being too rough if it was too rough, no matter what. But it wasn't too rough, not at all. I kept reading what Sam had written.

_T: Still, maybe you should start using lotion on your hands. Don't want to hurt him if you like him._

_D: Yeah, maybe. Do you really think he likes me back, though? I mean, he's so shy and quiet and nice. I think he'd let me hold his hand if he thought that was what I wanted to do, even if he didn't want to._

_T: Oh, yeah. Uh, I don't know what to do about that. I guess we should just keep looking for evidence._

_D: Yeah, I guess._

The conversation ended there, and I turned over the paper to find it blank. As that was what I wanted, I quickly wrote out a note to Sam.

**R: Looks like you were right, he does like me back. But there's no need to make this easy for him. We should use code of our own.**

Sam wrote her response soon enough.

**S: Let's.**

***line break***

We spent the entire gym period coming up with our own code to talk with. We practiced with it until it became easy to slip into, and we used it to talk around Danny and Tucker whenever we needed to talk about anything important. Even better, we didn't share it with either of the other boys whereas Sam knew exactly what their code was and could crack it easily.

"Say, Sam," I said as we walked home, using our new code. "Do you think you could share your homework answers with me? I didn't understand that one problem from that one science question." Meaning: Hey, Sam, I think it's time to annoy our friends.

Sam scowled in a very good imitation of being angry. "I won't give you the answers, but I'll teach you how to do it yourself. Then you won't fail that test on that one day." AKA: Yeah, sounds like a good idea.

So we used our code the entire way home, and even Danny became suspicious of our talk. He asked me about it, using the pout that almost always got his way, and I pretended to give in to him. I told him that I really did need Sam's science answers because I actually had no idea what was said in science class today. Lying, of course, but then I'd always been a good liar. No one really expected a kid like me to lie, and it came in handy more than once. He crumbled when he saw my innocent face and went back to talking code with Tucker. I sneaked a look at Sam and saw that she had pulled out her phone and was discreetly typing down what they were saying.

***line break***

Danny opted to drag me to his house that night for a "much-needed sleepover" and I nearly didn't finish packing before he dragged me there. I had just enough time to snag my headphones and mp3 player off of my desk before he phased me through the wall and flew me to his house. I hated it when other people phased me through things. It gave me the shivers. It was strange to think that, being half-ghost and having my normal temperature be at 92 degrees Fahrenheit. But, well, it did give me the shivers.

Danny almost managed to sneak me inside without anyone noticing. Almost. Jazz happened to turn the corner, leading her mother along when they spotted me. With a squeal, Jazz pounced on me and hugged me tightly. Apparently, she missed me. She nearly made me pass out, but Danny managed to wrestle me away and hold me close himself before I could suffocate. Mrs. Fenton hugged me too, and she sent me to Danny's room while she scolded Danny for not telling her he was bringing me over. Before I was out of hearing range, I heard Mrs. Fenton say something that made me blush and walk faster.

"You better not do anything with him tonight, Danny," she said sternly. "If I hear anything from your room besides quiet snoring or laughter..."

"Mom!" he complained. I imagined that he was blushing too, what with her insinuations about what we were going to be doing. "I thought you trusted me to be more responsible than that! Besides, I haven't..."

I got out of earshot before I could hear whatever else Danny was going to say, but that also meant I was away from Mrs. Fenton's response. For better or for worse, I couldn't hear anything more. I set my things up in Danny's room while I waited for him, but I didn't expect him to phase through the door silently and tackle me from behind, sending me sprawling on his bed.

I squeaked in surprise and he laughed, climbing off of me and pulling me close. "Sorry," he whispered into my ear. "Not for knocking you over, but for not being sorry about it."

"So you're sorry you're not sorry?" I giggled, despite myself.

He chuckled himself and released me after a little bit. We played games, I introduced him to new songs, and he made me laugh more than I ever had before. He noticed me getting sleepy around 11 pm, so he pulled me into bed and shut off the lights with a flicker of his ghost powers. I tried to protest against him, but he hushed me and made me lie still in his arms. Before I could protest again, I found myself lulled by the security of his embrace.

So I settled down and snuggled into his arms, ignoring my rising blush, and fell asleep. I was happy enough not to notice that Mrs. Fenton and Jazz checked in on us through the door that night, and one or both of them may have taken a picture. I was also content enough not to notice that a certain two ghosts checked in on us that night. A spiky-blue-flame-haired ghost with a guitar and punk-style green haired ghost who liked to style my hair.


	16. Chapter 16

**To Soulkeeper, I'm really glad you like this story! You're welcome that I update this piece, but I want you and everyone who reads this to know that I write this because you all like it. I wouldn't write this if I thought no one wanted to read it. So really, thank you for giving me the motivation to keep writing this. **

The moment I woke up, I knew something was wrong. Not wrong as in bad, but wrong as in... well, wrong.

For starters, Danny had me pinned underneath him as he slept. The older boy clutched me to him like a child would a teddy bear, and I felt a blush rise up on my cheeks. It seemed that I was blushing more and more as of late, as my crush on the boy above me developed into something bigger. Next, my core was beating irregularly fast. As a halfa, my core takes the place of my heart and it functions just as a heart would. In a ghost, it would just supply the powers for said ghost. The third thing that was wrong, we weren't at FentonWorks.

Instead, we were at... Kitty's realm in the Ghost Zone?

Oh good, because that made me happy. Not. The only reason I could think of that Kitty would want me here for would be to force me to confess my crush on Danny. _To_ Danny. Not okay. In the recent times when she'd kidnapped me to mess with my hair, I hadn't really minded. I could share things with Kitty that I couldn't share with Sam, because Sam would almost definitely run to Danny with it and tell him. I wasn't exactly a threat to Sam.

Kitty, on the other hand, kept secrets well. She was the one to encourage me to even tell Sam that I had a crush on him, and I definitely wouldn't have done that without her pushing. So Kitty knew much more about my crush than Sam did though I did keep certain information to myself, such as how I had the increasing urge to hold his hand the longer time went on. I was sure that Clockwork was doing this on purpose. He must have been having fun watching me squirm. At least, whatever past for fun around him.

Danny shifted just then, pulling me onto his chest as he laid down on his back. My blush heightened and I squirmed a little, embarrassed by the position I was in. Instead of releasing me, Danny's grip got tighter the more I squirmed, so I eventually had to stop so that I could keep being good at breathing.

"Rose, no," Danny mumbled, and I froze. "Don't leave..." He shifted yet again, rolling over and curling up around my body. I stared at my raven-haired crush and sighed, cuddling close. As long as Danny wasn't awake, I might as well enjoy the time as I had it. However, my slight movement woke Danny up and he groaned in sleepiness and hugged me closer for a moment before realizing what he was doing and letting me go.

"S-Sorry," he mumbled, not looking at me. Though, I wasn't looking at him either.

"I-It's alright." I glanced around the room in surprise. I hadn't noticed it earlier, but we had been laying on Kitty's guest bed. A familiar guitar was set up against the wall, and I smiled a little. Ember was here, then. No wonder Kitty was acting. I acted a little better around Ember because I was terrified of her. Next to me, Danny frowned as he sees the guitar.

"Don't worry, I'll get us out of here, Rose," he assured me. However, I grabbed onto his arm before he could change into Phantom, using my puppy dog stare against him.

"Don't hurt either of them, Danny," I whined. "Kitty is my friend and Ember has never hurt me. If they took the trouble of getting us here and leaving us unharmed, then there's obviously a reason for it."

He opened his mouth to argue, but he promptly shut it as Ember interrupted us.

"That's right, babypop and dipstick," Ember chuckled. I had a feeling that I happened to be "babypop". Ember used that name against me a lot. Though, that meant that Danny was "dipstick". Not a better alternative to babypop. "You two are here to help Kitty and me. Kitty's getting bored of styling babypop's hair and I'm getting bored of practicing with dipstick. So we're switching."

Danny and I groaned simultaneously.

***line break***

I dodged another one of Ember's attacks as she tried to focus on hitting me. I was a much smaller, much more agile target than Danny, and Ember had been having trouble with Klemper recently. Klemper avoided her attacks all too easily and he was beginning to be an annoyance to her. I understood, even though I had made friends with Klemper just to get him on my side. He was okay, he wasn't as annoying when you finally agreed to be his friend. But, well, he was just a little weird.

Either way, I was practicing with Ember and Danny was being forced to suffer through Kitty's hair-styling. It was a nice change, but I couldn't imagine how Danny felt. I tried not to get distracted, I really did, but staying focused on avoiding Ember's attacks was getting difficult. Ember must have been frustrated, because she sighed and stopped her attacking.

"Alright, babypop, tell me what I gotta do to hit you!" Ember's eyes glowed and her hair flared, making her look even scarier than she normally did.

"First off, you're aiming for me," I told her, and she raised one eyebrow.

"What am I supposed to do, aim off to your side?" she scoffed.

"Actually, yes. You have to anticipate where I'm going to go, and shoot there. More often than not, you'll hit me." Before I finished speaking, she tried to shoot me. I tried to dodge to the side but then I realized that was where she had shot the bolt of ecto-energy. It hit me in the stomach and I went flying, smashing down on Kitty's island. Kitty herself came running out following by Danny, who had been forced into Phantom form and whose white hair was now styled into a cowlick.

"Ember!" Kitty scolded as she helped me sit up, gasping for breath. Ember had hit me directly in my still-mending ribs and I was certain they'd broken all over again. I could actually feel them shifting themselves back into their places. "You were supposed to be _practicing_, not trying to kill him! Did you have to have your guitar on full blast?"

Danny glared at Ember as she spoke, flustered and actually concerned. It surprised me. "Sorry! I didn't expect to actually hit the babypop! Jeez, do you think I hurt him badly?" She leaned over me, reaching one hand out hesitantly. She was surprising me today, this was so out of character. Maybe she liked me more than I thought she did; I'd always assumed she hated me because Skulker, her boyfriend, wanted my pelt on his wall.

"No, " I coughed. "You may have just broken three of my ribs right before they were going to finish healing, but you didn't hurt me too badly. You caught me by surprise, though." I looked up at her, grinning in a painful sort of way. "If you can catch Klemper like that then I don't think you'll have any problems."

"I've got to take you home," Danny fretted, picking me up bridal style. I blushed and glanced away from him, ignoring Kitty's victorious smirk. "Thanks, Kitty. For not killing me, I mean."

"Don't expect it to be like that next time, Danny," she warned, her smirk getting bigger. "Don't forget my suggestion."

"I won't." Oh good, more code. Just what I needed. Danny shook out Kitty's hair-styling, making her frown, and flew us back to the Fenton Ghost Portal. I was so tired that I fell asleep halfway there.

***line break***

"Rose!" Mrs. Fenton stormed into Danny's room, startling me awake. "Why didn't you tell us you lived in an abandoned apartment? You could have been staying with us!"

"Um- ah- uh- reasons?" I winced at her motherly look.

"You and Danny are going to your living space and getting all of your things. You are moving in here," she declared. She stood me up and pushed me out, no argument heard. Danny was smirking a little, and now Kitty's "suggestion" made sense to me. I groaned as Mrs. Fenton pushed us both out of the door.

"I have cats!" I protested. "They might not need me to feed them, but they're mine and if I bring them here, they could easily get sick or hurt here!"

Mrs. Fenton didn't even hesitate. "You're going to have to give them to the local pet shelter. Your life is worth much more than theirs."

Within an hour, my five cats (the father cat, the mother cat, and the three kittens) had been given to the pet shelter and the little belongings I owned had been transported to FentonWorks. Danny had rather eagerly agreed to share his room with me, insisting to his mother that we could both sleep on his bed and that there really was no need to get out the inflatable mattress or have me sleep in the guest room. She let it go rather willingly, as long as I had a place to actually stay I guessed.

Mrs. Fenton made sure that I understood the rules of the house. Curfew was 10. Running near the lab was not permitted. Chores were expected of everyone. Mr. Fenton made sure that I knew that I now had to listen to him talk about his ghost-hunting weapons, though I did manage to convince him not to test them on me or Danny and to instead test them on real ghosts or himself. Jazz made sure that I knew that I was now subject to her psycho-analyses and that "resistance is futile". I laughed at that and told her that my mental state was perfectly fine, but that I'd come to her if I started needed her psychiatrist help.

And Danny, of course, made sure that I knew that there was no getting out of this. I was here to stay and after that day, I lived at FentonWorks.


	17. Chapter 17

Since I now lived at FentonWorks, I found myself returning to the problem of telling Danny my feelings more and more often as the days went by. Both Sam _and_ Tucker knew; in fact, pretty much the whole school knew except for Danny. And I was almost positive that Danny liked me back, so what was holding me back?

Uncertainty.

I'd always had trouble trusting people. But I trusted Danny more than anything. I just... wasn't ready to tell him. I wanted to wait for the perfect opportunity. And it presented itself at the end of the school year, just a week before school let out.

Dash was inviting _us,_ the nerds of the school, to the end-of-the-school-year party. It would take place on the last day of school at Dash's house, and he was inviting _us._ Danny accepted quickly, as I did. Sam and Tucker accepted soon after, and Dash looked a little unnerved.

"Hey, uh," he said, "I see you guys hanging around the places where Phantom and Shadow are seen... do ya think you could.." He glanced away, looking _embarrassed_. I would hold that look on his face in my heart forever. Priceless. "... invite them?" he finished lamely.

See, lately rumors had been floating around saying that Phantom and Shadow were dating, as my ghost form had been adopted as a second hero alongside Danny Phantom (the townspeople sometimes looked really haughty that they had _two_ ghost heroes). The evidence for this was that they were never seen without the other anymore, and when they were the other almost always appeared to help out before long. Not only that, but people thought that Danny was overprotective of me. Well, he was, but I didn't think people had picked up on it. But we were not dating.

"We'll try," I told Dash kindly, and he nodded and hurried off looking relieved. "No promises!" I yelled after him, snorting when he didn't answer.

"Jeez, he could have said thank you," Danny grumbled. I nodded in agreement.

"But hey!" Tucker exclaimed happily. "We got invited to the end of the school year party!"

"Yeah, and we've got to try to get Phantom and Shadow there as well as Danny and Rose," Sam retorted.

To that, I cocked my head to one side and pulled them into an empty hallway. Shadow quickly appeared, and we both looked at them in confusion as their shocked looks. Danny looked like he wanted to faint.

"What?" we said at the same time. "Can't you duplicate, Danny?"

***line break***

Last day of school. Oh boy. Apparently, as I had learned last week, Danny was not as adept at duplicating as I was. I practiced duplicating more, somehow. So we had found Dash and said that Phantom and Shadow wouldn't be able to show up for very long and they'd probably only show up if ghosts attacked. He'd looked a little crestfallen that his heroes wouldn't be there the entire time, but he at least didn't revoke our invitations. Of course, before school ended Dash had shoved us into his locker, but neither of us really minded.

We'd told Maddie and Jack (I still wasn't used to calling them by their first names) where we would be after school, and we had assured them that there would be no drugs or alcohol at the party. We'd even called Dash and made him tell them that there was nothing illegal there. They only believed it after we told them millions of times.

So we headed over to Dash's around 5 PM, laughing and joking the entire way. The jock let us in with only a slight sneer, and for the next hour all we did was fool around and play the games that everyone else was. As it turned out, everyone was way nicer to us here than they ever were before. Danny and I got our ghost senses before long, and we excused ourselves to go outside. As we left, we heard a few bets going on.

"Who wants to bet a 20 that they'll be together before midnight?" Quite a few people bet for that one...

Once outside, we turned into our ghostly alter egos and reappeared inside, getting ready to fight... whatever it was we needed to fight. Our ghost senses didn't often alert us to the other; it certainly hadn't happened for a while. We did get mobbed, though, and after giving off what had to be at least a hundred autographs without one ghost showing up we disappeared again and our human forms walked back in.

Dash, Sam, and Tucker quickly pulled us into a game of Truth or Dare with a hint of "Spin the Bottle". I got dared to punch Tucker (which I did gladly for starting up the bet about Danny and I being together by midnight), I got dared to arm-wrestle Dash (which I lost), and I got dared to tell Sam my worst secret. Which happened to be that I was actually deathly afraid of clowns. It was the worst one that she didn't already know, anyway.

Sam spun the bottle and it landed on me. She smirked and said, "Truth or Dare?"

"Dare," I said, feeling confident. My confidence was quickly destroyed by her smirk. That's right, she knew that I liked Danny!

"I dare you to bring Danny into the closet over there," she pointed to the closet, "and tell him."

"Tell me what?" Danny asked, blushing a bit. I was blushing way more than he was, and I grabbed his arm and pulled him into said closet. The moment the door clicked shut, Danny had his lips on mine.

I froze for a moment, unsure, before I shyly kissed him back. He pulled back with a satisfied smile.

"Liquor lips indeed," he mumbled to me, reminding me that he had caught me singing loudly to my all-time favorite song earlier that week. We were in the closet for I didn't know how long before Sam knocked on the door.

"Hey, you two," she teased, "you better not be doing anything!"

We blushed at her insinuations and exited the closet, holding hands. Everyone in the room groaned and Tucker made at least $500. Danny and I mumbled to each other the entire rest of the night, and we flew home together as well. When we got to our room, Kitty, Ember, and surprisingly Jazz were waiting for us.

"So you two really did get together," Jazz stated, looking triumphant. "You don't lie, Kitty."

"Don't say that," Ember snorted, "she lies like a fox."

***line break***

It was awkward telling Maddie and Jack. At first, they were happy and even they admitted that they were waiting for us to get together. However, they soon started setting down rules that made both of us blush and escape to our shared room.

"Let's try not to let on that we're dating when we're on ghost form," I mumbled. "I want to see people fight over the rumors."

"Yeah," Danny chuckled sleepily. "Let's just hint at it profusely to stir up the arguments."

"Exactly," I smiled, stretching before cettling back to curl up against Danny. And when I fell asleep that night, it was one of the best night's sleeps I'd ever had.


	18. Chapter 18

**I'm sorry for not uploading anything yesterday! The site was down and I couldn't access my profile to upload anything. I might not upload much today either, as I'll be pretty busy. I'll try to get out more than one chapter today, though!**

The very first day that Danny and I were together, people caught on that summer, Youngblood decided to annoy us. Really, he was just an annoyance most of the time, but no one else could see him. Even Jazz thought we were acting crazy. But Jazz was barely a year and a half older than we were. She was only 17. Jack decided that we needed to go camping to get rid of our "ghostly mindset which was causing us to see ghosts" so three hours of sleep after trying to get Youngblood to go away the entire night later, we were in the Fenton Assault RV driving towards what could very well be the middle of nowhere.

Maddie tried to tell stories about how she and Jack had met, but all three of us "kids" immediately found something else to do.

"Sorry, Mrs. Fe- er, Maddie," I apologized, catching myself on what to call her, "but none of us are really interested in knowing what you and Jack did together before you got together."

"Oh, alright," she relented. "Do you remember when you used to take pictures all the time, Rose?" she asked suddenly.

"Huh?" I thought for a moment, and finally pulled up the fuzzy memories. "Oh, yeah. Back before you guys moved away from Wisconsin. I remember when I made Jazz pose with Danny for a picture and Jazz was having none of it before I told her she was a bad sister."

"Hey!" Jazz protested as Danny cracked up.

"Oh yeah, I remember that, Rose!" Danny ruffled my hair and I muttered fiercely at him as though I was calling upon my mother's magic, and he stopped with wide eyes.

"Just kidding," I snorted. "My mother never taught me any of her mumbo jumbo."

Danny rolled his eyes and messed up my hair more before turning back to teasing Jazz about being a "bad sister". Both of our ghost senses went off not a moment later, and we claimed that we needed to do something in the back of the van. Maddie rolled her eyes and Jack tried to tell us not to do any "funny business", but Jazz just muttered at us that there were no ghosts way out here. Danny fiercely whispered under his breath to her that the ghost sense doesn't lie.

We changed forms and moved outside the van, having to constantly fly to keep up with the vehicle. Youngblood was laughing it up on the roof of the RV, thinking it hilarious that no one believed us. I crackled with electricity in anger, hitting Youngblood not once, but three times.

"They think you two are crazy!" he cackled at us, and I dove downwards in an attempt to grab him. He shifted at just the right time and I nearly hit my head on the RV. That would have alerted Jack to us and then we would have been toast. I wasn't sure if it was a halfa thing, but neither Danny nor I liked toast. We'd loved toast when we were younger.

Danny made a wild ecto-ray blast and almost hit Youngblood. Instead, he hit the canyon wall. Growling, there was a very audible _snap_ as my patience broke. Danny turned his green eyes on me in fear, but he saw that I wasn't glaring at him. No, I was shooting my death stare at Youngblood. Landing on the roof, I didn't bother hiding my footsteps.

_Thump_

Youngblood shifted backwards, away from my tendrils of lightnings.

_Thump_

I stopped a weapon from opening and my lightning shocked Youngblood.

_Thump_

_Thump_

_Thump_

Paralyzed in fear and wonder at the electricity dancing in my eyes, Youngblood almost didn't notice when I pinned him down with my foot. Almost. His gaze broke when his back hit the RV and my electricity danced along his sides, grazing him but never really touching him. The wind blew my hair out of the way of my eye socket, and I might have scared him. Might have. Only if the RV hadn't suddenly turned and I'd lost my balance and fallen.

Danny caught me, but my core was no longer producing as much electricity as it had been. My anger had turned to surprise when I fell, and it would take a while to regain that anger.

"Oh, I get it now!" the young pirate ghost said. "You two are together! ...Ewww! You two are growing up!"

"Eww is right," I said, wrinkling my nose at him. "You smell terrible. When was the last time you took a bath?"

Youngblood screamed like I'd stuck him with a thorn, and I laughed.

"It never gets old when you tease younger kids about bathing," Danny chuckled, and we forgot about Youngblood for the moment. In that time, Youngblood made himself scarce. I saw him flying back a few paces and then going invisible. We went back down into the RV and turned back into our human forms, settling back down next to each other.

"What took you two so long?" Maddie asked us, suspicion dancing in her eyes. It took us a moment to realize what she was asking about.

"Oh, gross!"

***line break***

The camp was set up by nightfall, but neither Danny nor I could relax again. We'd noticed Youngblood again, and now we were edgy.

"Oh stop it, you two," Jazz finally snapped at us. "There are no ghosts out here!"

"Easy for you to say, oh 'big and powerful adult'," I retorted. "_You_ don't see him because _you _don't think you're a child. We aren't _crazy._"

"But I am!" Kit suddenly cakled from right beside us. I yelped and jumped, and Kit very quickly came into view. "Well, I think I'll be safe here from the asylum. Right, Cobalt?"

"Right," Cobalt answered, settled on his twin's shoulders. Kit laughed, and Jazz only looked confused.

"Uh, I hate to ask this, but who just said 'right'?"

"Cobalt did," Kit informed her, a crazy smile plastered on his face. "Only ghosts can see him, but everyone can hear him. At least, everyone within a five feet radius."

"I'm surprised you know what radius is, Kit," Cobalt said, raising one eyebrow. He knocked on his twin's head, smiling crookedly as Kit batted his hand away. "Looks like your head isn't empty after all."

Kit suddenly looked up, toppling Cobalt off of his shoulders, and sighed. "Aw, man. They've got the helicopters this time."

"Helicopters?" Danny and I asked incredulously. In all the time I'd known Kit, the asylum had never ever employed _helicopters_ to go after him.

Cobalt nodded. "Yeah, helicopters. This is a first."

Kit sighed again. "Oh well. It was nice seeing you three! Including you, Jazz," he grinned. Jazz's eyes widened in surprise. "I just know stuff," Kit told her before she asked.

Cobalt grabbed his twin, and very suddenly they were gone. I nodded. "Teleportation. Must be a nice power to have."


	19. Chapter 19

**I have created a poll on my profile! Please check it out and vote! It's really important as to what happens after this story is done. To WhiteChocolatePeppermintKtCorn, I'm glad you like this story! I hope I didn't butcher your name, by the way, I don't have my reviews open.**

Jazz was put in charge of watching Danny and me so that we would actually get some sleep. The moment the three of us were in the tent, Jazz made sure that we knew that nothing "ghostly" could get to us in here.

"Yeah, right," Danny muttered. "Because ghosts definitely can't go intangible."

I rolled my eyes, feeling annoyance at her spark up inside of me. She was just like a sister to me already. "Have you ever considered the possiblity that only kids can see Youngblood?" I asked her, and I felt her confusion as easily as though it was own.

"Youngblood?"

"The little kid pirate ghost who's been following us since we left Amity Park." When she shook her head no, I narrowed my eye at her and flipped over in my sleeping bag to have my back to her. Danny patted my shoulder like the sweetheart he was, but I could tell he was a little miffed with Jazz too. I twisted to look at Jazz, contemplating something. Then I grinned malevolently, my eye glowing turquoise, and waved goodbye at her. Her look of confusion turned to one of fury as I became intangible and I sunk into the ground, bringing Danny with me.

We went ghost outside the tent, gave each other a high five for infuriating Jazz, and we settled down on a lone tree to keep watch. We could hear Jack's snoring from all the way over here, and I contemplated something.

"Hey, Danny?"

"Yeah?" he yawned. He must be tired; he got even less sleep than I did.

"Ghost shields keep attacks out... but I wonder if it would keep ghosts out too? You know, one that make with our ecto-energy...?"

He contemplated the idea for a moment, then shrugged. "We can try it, but I don't know if it'll work."

"Let's test by putting one around Jazz's tent."

"Alright." He heaved himself up, blinking sleep away, and he put a shield around the tent. I reached forward with one hand and clucked in disappointment as my hand went through it without feeling anything.

"I guess not. I was hoping we could put one up and then sleep peacefully without trouble from Youngblood..."

"Yeah," Danny sighed, "things never really work out the way we want it to."

***line break***

We woke up to Jack and Maddie's tent moving. I hopped out of the tent only for Jazz to grab my ankle.

"Jazz! Your parents' tent is moving!" I protested, pulling my ankle out of her grip. Her teal gaze flicked to the tent, which promptly stopped moving.

"Oh, really." I growled in anger as she grabbed my shirt and put me in the RV. She locked the doors and put up a ghost shield. "There," she called teasingly, "now nothing can get to you."

I smirked at her and pointed to Danny, who promptly stole the keys from her.

Jazz promptly threw him into the RV too, right into me, and then we were both locked in the RV. "You two need to stop," she called. "There is nothing going on! Your minds are just making it up because you've been fighting ghosts for too long."

"Danny, do you think your ghostly wail can get us out of this?" I whispered to him.

"No, but if we can get Jazz to think that she's a kid..."

We glanced at each other, and then Danny scampered farther into the RV and starting pressing buttons. Jazz was hit with water, mocked. Nothing was getting to her, except... Danny and I shared a kiss, smirking when she visibly winced. Obviously, she thought kissing was gross still too.

"Jazz is a spazz! Jazz is a spazz!" I mocked, kissing Danny again. I was having fun with this.

"Stop it!" she ordered. "I'm an adult and you have to listen to me!"

"Face it, Jazz," Danny called, making faces at her. "You're no more an adult than we are!"

"Stop it!" she ordered again.

"Stop it!" I mocked, poorly imitating her voice with a very high-pitched squeak to my voice.

"Stop mocking me!" she fumed; we were getting to her.

"Stop mocking me!" Danny called, sticking his tongue out.

"I'm serious!" she shouted. We were going to get our butts whooped for this, but...

"Oh? Oh, what's this? Is this- is this Bearinstein?" I asked, pulling up Jazz's toy bear. I ripped it apart, guiltily taking pleasure in doing so.

"Put him down! Put him down!" Jazz screamed.

I stared at her with wide eyes as I pulled the stuffing out of the bear. Youngblood flew up behind her and laughed.

"Oh man! She's even brattier than I am!" he snickered. Immediately Jazz's eyes went wide.

"Who said that?" She turned around and saw Youngblood, who promptly stopped laughing.

The ghost shield went down, and Danny and I escaped the van.

"Want to play with the big kids, Youngblood?" I called, grabbing him by his shirt.

"Then you'll have to learn how to play the game!" Danny snickered. Jazz hopped into the RV and drove around, us hanging onto the roof only through the power of ghost equilibrium. It was how we walked on walls without falling. Danny grabbed Youngblood's leg and let his face skid on the ground.

"Having fun yet?" I asked innocently, catching the Fenton thermos when Jazz threw it at us. He was sucked into the thermos, and everything was fine. Finally.

***line break***

Jack and Maddie were excited to hear that the "ghostly happenings" had stopped overnight.

"I guess we just were in a mindset, and we were seeing things," I said calmly, hugging them both. I despised being touched, but I made an exception that once for them. Of course, I happened to shock them by accident with my little sparks.

"What was that?" Maddie asked, reeling away from me. I tipped my head to the side innocently.

"What do you mean, Maddie?" I shared a smirk with Danny and Jazz. Ah, well, things never changed. "Nothing happened."

Jack and Maddie went to start up the car, confused. I snorted as soon as they were out of earshot.

"Did you mean to shock them, Rose?" Danny asked me sternly. I snorted again, trying to conceal my laughter.

"Maybe, maybe not. How are you going to tell?" Needless to say, I was attacked by a tickle monster and was decidedly grumpy the whole way home.


	20. Chapter 20

It was strange to go back to school after summer. Summer had been spent fighting ghosts almost 24/7, Danny and I had almost been caught more times than we could count with both of hands combined, and suddenly we were expected to go to school like everything was alright? It seemed almost impossible that we could go to school normally, but that Thursday morning my alarm went off at 6 AM and I had to accept that it was really happening.

Over the summer, Danny and I had practiced moves. He'd tried to teach me the ghostly wail, but what happened with me was something a little different. Danny's ghostly wail emitted ecto-waves from his throat. Mine emitted ecto-electricity from my throat. I wasn't able to hold mine for very long without changing back, and I'd discovered that duplicating only made the power from my wail decrease as well. Danny had been working on duplication, something that I did with ease. I tried to tell him how to do it but he wouldn't listen, intent on doing it himself. He eventually got it, but he couldn't hold it for more than a minute.

I roused Danny so that he would get up to get ready for school, but he quickly pulled me down and went back to sleep. Unable to escape his grip, I had to wait until 7 am for him to get up and let me get dressed. I couldn't say that I was unhappy with being snuggled up against him for another hour. Danny and I dressed quickly, ate quickly, and were out of the door in 20 minutes. It had to be a new record for getting-ready time for me.

We went ghost and flew to school, not trying to fight the bus crowds. We'd recently heard that the Red Huntress was back on the hunt for Phantom and now me as well, so we flew to school invisibly. We didn't feel like being late. When we walked in holding hands, plenty of people groaned and Tucker was paid more. Apparently, Tucker made a lot of bets about when Danny and I would get together.

"Were we really that oblivious?" I muttered to Danny, who shrugged.

"I guess so..." Danny frowned. "If people could pick up that we like each other, then how do they not pick up on the ghost thing?"

***line break***

Danny and I ended up in all of each other's classes, which was good. On our own, our ghost abilities showed through, especially in Gym. Together, it looked like we had trained together over the summer. We were faster than Dash now, and Mrs. Tetslaf would definitely try to urge us onto the track team. Ghost fighting kind of got in the way of that, though.

The day went by pretty fast. I found myself stumbling to catch up, as though pieces of reality were falling out of place. Danny seemed to having the same problem, as did Sam and Tucker. We met up at lunch to discuss it.

"Do you think it might be Kit?" I asked suddenly, startling the three.

"Why do you think it might be him?" Sam asked, curious.

"Kit breaks the laws of physics and the laws of logic," I said, waving my hand in the air, still holding an apple. I took another bite of the fruit and swallowed it. "Too much contact with him can cause reality to fall out. Or at least look like it's falling out of place. In all actuality, our brains are trying to catch up with what's going on around us because Kit emits some sort of undetectable scent that messes with how our brains perceive things." I shrugged. "Kit's in the asylum again right now, and to get rid of this all we really have to do clear our heads."

"And how do we do that?" Tucker retorted, looking a little aggravated. Maybe it was because Danny was spending a lot more time with me now than he did with Tuck.

"Meditate," Sam answered for me. For the entire lunch period, we sat at our table and meditated. And it really worked; reality stopped falling and I found myself able to keep up. Of course, Danny and I passed notes whenever we could, using our powers to invisibly pass notes if we had to.

***line break***

After the school day, I discovered that my head hurt. Prolonged exposure to Kit and then clearing your head so quickly sometimes did that, especially after doing exercise. My ghost sense went off and I glanced around, looking for Danny. Not seeing him, I quickly hid and changed into Shadow, spinning in a circle in the air looking for the ghost. Suddenly I was tackled to the ground from above, and I groaned in pain at the weight on top of me.

It happened to be Danny in Phantom form, grinning down at me while perched on my back. He was smiling like a cheeky little kid, and I could tell that Danny and I were causing a scene.

"Phantom!" I groaned. "Did you have to do that?"

"Do what?" he asked, still being cheeky. Blushing green, I twisted and threw Danny off, landing on top of him. He pushed me away quickly, and I spun in the air.

"Hey!" I pouted. I dodged him as he lunged at me, chuckling as he failed to stop and turn and ended up crashing into a bush. He lunged again and I nimbly avoided him at the very last moment, doing a cartwheel. This time, I lunged at him as he lunged at me, and I used my hand to bounce right over his head. I grabbed my discarded backpack and floated into the air. "Come on, Phantom!" I teased. "Come and get me before the Fentons get here!"

I darted away into the air, away from the school and away from Danny. I yelped as he shot at me, spinning away from the blast even though he wouldn't have hit me anyway. "Don't do that! You could have hurt me!" I shouted at him, lunged at him and catching him by surprise. I smacked him on the head and darted away again, hiding invisibly inside a bush.

I heard Danny run after me, and I pulled him into the bush and turned him invisible as the Fenton RV went by. It'd been a while since we'd played around in our ghost forms, and definitely not at school. I was sure that someone had recorded us fooling around, and I was even more sure that someone would have asked us for autographs if we hadn't disappeared when we did. It was hard to be ghost heroes, especially when a lot of people thought we were evil. But it was alright. We were helping the town.

Speaking of helping the town, my ghost sense went off again and I hiccuped. Danny gave me a strange look, but then his ghost sense went off too. I pouted.

"How come only I hiccup?" I muttered.

The ghost turned out to be Skulker. We hadn't seen Skulker for a while. In the midst of fighting him, I noticed that he was only targeting Danny. He aimed one of his guns at Danny, and...

"No!" I shrieked, alerting Danny. I lunged for the white-haired boy, knocking him out of the way as the rocket came at him. The rocket hit me in the face, right in the empty eye socket that I normally tried to keep hidden. I remembered screaming and hitting the ground with a sickening _crack!_ I could barely hear Danny shouting and getting angry, I barely noticed the ectoplasm dripping down my face, I didn't notice the ectoplasm pooling from my scraped cheek.

_Suddenly I was thrown into a memory. I was a little kid again, and my mother had been drinking. She stumbled towards me, followed by a ghost whose appearance would soon be burned into my mind. She held me down as he reached forward, burning my eye out. I screamed and thrashed, wailing for help. The blood poured down my face, and I couldn't stop screaming from the pain. Eventually, I was met with a slap to my face, and my mind went blank for a moment..._

I snapped back to the real world and groaned, struggling to stand. I couldn't have been out more than a few minutes, the fight above me still going. Ignoring the gasps of horror coming from the people who can congregated to watch the fight, I flew up into the air behind Skulker, unbalanced and dizzy with pain. My ectoplasm dripped down to the ground but evaporated before it hit the asphalt.

"You know," I gasped, blood running from my mouth, "I don't really appreciate being hit in the face. I hope you will, though." I raised my hand and shot a weak ecto-ray into Skulker's face, surprising him enough for Danny to regain his senses and suck him into the thermos. Danny pulled me to the ground, fussing over my face.

"Are you sure you're okay? That's a bad wound," he fretted. I batted his hand away wearily, collapsing against him.

"I'm fine," I mumbled. "Just... can we go home?" He picked up on the weariness of my voice and he nodded wordlessly, going invisible and flying us back to FentonWorks. Once there, he washed my face and I changed back into Rose. The wound from Skulker's rocket was already almost gone; all it had really done was open up the old wound.

"Sleep," Danny told me, settling us down in his bed. He, too, had once again become my black-haired boyfriend, and I leaned against him for comfort. I willingly allowed him to lull me into sleep, wanting to shut out the memories again...


	21. Chapter 21

_D-O-L-L-H-O-U-S-E, _

_I see things that _

_Nobody else sees..._

I sat in bed, listening to the song. I sighed, listening only halfheartedly. I couldn't make the memories go away, no matter what I did. Danny had forced me to stay home today, a splitting headache only helping him to convince his mother to let me stay home. He had her put up the ghost shield as well, "just in case Rose's problem is from a ghost."

I curled my lip and then winced at the action, my headache getting worse. I settled my face into Danny's pillow, shifting in discomfort. Maddie had already done everything she could think of to do, which included trying to give me a shot. I'd broken the syringe and told her that if she tried to stick me with a needle, she would lose consciousness. She must have accounted my grumpiness to the fault of my headache, because she didn't try again. Or maybe I'd shocked.

_Hey, girl,_

_Look at my mom,_

_She's got it going on..._

_HAH._

_You're blinded by her_

_JEWELRY._

I yelped as Danny landed on me from behind, crushing me sideways. He laughed quietly, minding my headache. Maybe his mom had told him not to bother me too much. Or maybe he was just considerate.

"Hey, Rose," Tucker called from the doorway. I lifted my head up to glare at him for being loud, and he visibly winced.

Sam was much more kind to my migraine. She came up close and whispered to me, "Sorry your head hurts, Rose." I nodded to her, wearily sinking my face back into the pillow. Danny shifted off of my back and pull out his homework, and I reluctantly sat up so that I could see what it was. Income calculations. I scowled and picked up the paper, wanting to rip it up, but Danny quickly plucked it out of my hands once my intentions became clear.

Sam tried to get me to eat a tiny bite of the salad she'd brought up (courtesy of Maddie telling them that I hadn't eaten all day, probably), but I tried to bite her in a decidedly-grumpy way. I did get the fork, though. And I snapped the plastic utensil in half with just one twitch of my jaw. I spat the halves of the fork into the trash and curled up again.

"Jeez, Mr. Grumpy," Sam snorted. "We're trying to help."

"Can't keep anything down," I growled. "Migraines tend to disrupt my digestive system."

Tucker laughed, but I threw Danny's book at him and nearly broke his glasses. I growled and curled up more, but then I tried to get up so that I could punch him.

"Meat-eaters don't get these kinds of migraines." Growling at my discomfort, I threw Danny's book at him again and hit him right in the back of the head.

"And now they do," I growled. My eye glowed turquoise. "Your migraine will be so fierce, your _ancestors _will feel it, not to mention the next million generations of kids your _offspring_ have."

"May the curse of the rose be upon you," Danny snorted in a deep voice that just oozed hilarity. I laughed a bit, but it hurt my head to laugh so I soon stopped. Tucker only groaned and glared, but he soon broke into rambunctious laughter as well. Just like that, my migraine went away a little.

"See," I said, "Weird Al was right. Laughter _is _the very best medicine. Thankfully, my appendix will never burst because Vlad Masters had me get surgery to remove it when I was in his care."

"_Vlad Masters_?" Danny said incredulously.

I nodded energetically. "Yeah, after I accidentally fell into the Ghost Zone, I lived with Kitty and Johnny 13 for a while. Then Vlad Masters came and said he would take care of me and keep me safe from the Wisconsin ghost, Plasmius." I smiled a little. "He took care of me until I moved here, you know. he was the first one to know my secret."

"Rose," Sam started. "Vlad Masters _is_ the Wisconsin ghost."

I stared at her in shock. Nuh-uh. Plasmius had burned my eye out; Masters was nice, if a bit of a fruitloop. Masters was the one who had put up ghost shields around his mansion all the time to keep Plasmius out; I'd seen Masters walk through the shield just fine, and then seconds later have Plasmius show up!

I told my friends this, but they shook their heads.

"Dude," Tucker said solemnly, "Vlad can duplicate just as well as you can, if not better. He was tricking you."

I couldn't believe it, didn't want to believe it. But what they said made a little bit of sense... I shook my head and sighed. "He paid for me to get here, too. Do you think he set it up like this, then? Minus the whole "Vlad is Plasmius" talk?"

My three friends nodded.

***line break***

_I was in Vlad's mansion. He was smiling at me, just like he always did. I wanted to ask him why he hadn't told me he was Plasmius, but I suddenly realized I was just 10 at the time, and I'd broken something in anger because my powers weren't doing what I wanted. The entire notion that he was Plasmius slid from my head. _

_"See, Rose," he tutted, "I'm not mad at you. But I am disappointed in you. I thought you would know better than the destroy my belongings."_

_"I'm sorry," I said automatically. "It just gets hard..."_

_"I know, I know," he soothed. "Why don't we play some chess? Chess is good for the mind..."_

I woke up very suddenly, the sky still dark. My phone told me it was still only 2:37 AM, so why had I woken up? I dimly remembered the conversation in my dream, but I was very certain that hadn't happened ever. The words Vlad said I understood. He never got mad at me, he never tried to punish me because he knew I did that well enough myself. Whenever he was upset with me, he told me so. The guilt would eat at me until I came crying and apologizing. But what did chess have to do with anything at all?

***line break***

My migraine was alright the next day, manageable, responding to the ibuprofen that Maddie gave me. Jack gabbed to be about the "Ghost Gabber 8.0", which would take whatever a ghost said and translate it. He pushed it intomy face for me to try, and I stuttered for a moment.

"Uh, um, ah- h-hello?" I squeaked.

_"Hello. I am a ghost. Fear me." _The automated voice that came out almost made me burst into laughter. Jack frowned.

"Must still have some bugs," he muttered, tinkering with it at the table. Danny grabbed my arm and pulled me from the kitchen as soon as I'd finished eating.

"Gotta go, bye!" he called out.

_"Gotta go, bye! Fear me."_

***line break***

"I thought you got Mr. Fenton to stop testing his inventions on you?" Tucker asked, having completely forgiven me for chucking books at him yesterday.

"I tried," I sighed. "But I swear if the sentence doesn't include the word _fudge_ then it's lost on him."

"Company," Danny said as his ghost sense went on. I felt mine build up as well, and I let out in another hiccup. I frowned.

"What's with the hiccuping lately?" I muttered. I'd been hiccuping a lot recently. Maybe it was a side effect from trying to take a breath just as often as normal humans did, or maybe it was just something that happened sometimes. Tucker and Sam hid Danny and I as we transformed, and immediately I noticed why I was hiccuping.

I was hyper-aware of my core beating much faster than it normally did, even when I was around Danny. Perhaps trying to act human was having a toll on my half-ghost health. I let it slow down and I managed to get it back to normal core-beats-per-minute speed, which was a bmp of 30, just as another ghost sense was emitted from my mouth. No hiccup. I glanced up, not noticing anything, and then Danny and I glanced at each other and nodded. Looked like we'd have to take matters into our own ghostly hands.

We flew up together, pressing our backs together as extra insurance that no one could sneak up on us. Just the Box Ghost, who was quickly defeated. However, I was alerted to the oncoming thunderstorm, and I sparked a little. Thunderstorms always messed with me. All the static energy in the air, apparently.

"We'd better get home before it starts storming," I told my friends as we landed and changed back in the cover of a few trees. "I tend to get super-charged with energy when I'm outside during a thunderstorm. It's not as bad when I'm inside, but, well, let's just say FentonWorks will be spotless by the time the storm stops and I won't look any worse for wear."

My friends shared a glance, and then chuckled when Danny tackled me to the ground yet again.


	22. Chapter 22

I was jittery the entire duration of the storm. I didn't sleep, and by the time Maddie woke up the next morning the entire house was spotless. The thunder was still rolling, and I was still running about finding every possible thing to do to burn energy.

"Storms sure do make you energetic," she mumbled, yawning and grabbing a cup of coffee.

"Only thunderstorms, because of all the static energy in the air," I replied quickly, babbling. She shot me an amused glance, obviously not thinking this was an issue.

Jack was the next up, excited by the idea that the entire house was clean. He thumped me on the back when I bounced past him, trying to find a way to get rid of my manic energy. Then Jazz got up, needing to get to her classes much earlier than Danny did. She shot me a worried look, the only completely human person in the entire house who knew what was going on. Finally, Danny got up, stumbling his way downstairs. I ran into him a total of thirteen times.

Eventually, with the storm showing no sign of stopping, I finally just collapsed in the living room and panted. I twitched constantly; keeping still wasn't something that was going to happen. However, all the energy _did_ have a positive effect among the negative ones; I was not likely to fall asleep in class today. And neither was Danny, because I'd spent the night fighting off ghosts so that he could sleep. Also to burn off energy, but ghosts had stayed clear once they all realized that the thunderstorm was hyping me up.

At school, I couldn't concentrate; I just kept tapping my foot and twitching, the poster child for ADHD. Even Mr. Lancer got fed up with it; we had him for most subjects this year, my friend and I. After English, he stopped me from leaving and questioned me about it.

"It's just the storm, sir," I giggled maniacally. "All the static energy in the air." I giggled my way out, the energy inside of me trying to free itself. Luckily, I got a very nice surprise: I had a double Gym period today.

Well, not really. But we were having lunch inside and we were allowed to use the gym to mess around in, sort of like recess from when we were in elementary school. I did laps around the gym right after eating, and then I got to do the same exact thing at the very end of the day.

Mrs. Tetslaf was impressed, to say the least. She'd never seen a kid complete five laps around the huge gym in less than three minutes. And then after I ran the required laps, I ran around the track until the very last person had completed their laps. I wasn't the slightest out of breath; thunderstorms tended to make me get an adrenaline feeling. I twitched the entire time she talked, and then I twitched during dodgeball.

Dodgeball was pretty fun, though. Like, what other kid could say they got Dash Baxter out of the game no less than five times while willingly getting themselves out every chance they had to run laps around the gym? While also having ghost powers and leaving the class unseen every now and then to fight off ghosts? And not being the least bit tired?

***line break***

Apparently, the storm would be ending around five pm. That meant that Danny had to deal with a hyper boyfriend for the next three hours. He eventually forced me to lie down, but he couldn't keep be down long. I was far too full of energy to just stay in one place for longer than half a minute. I made a new record just because I loved Danny enough to lay with him and do homework for two minutes. It was torture.

I was pretty happy to beat up Box Ghost, as it gave me an outlet for my energy. He was defeated far to easily, though, so then I did ghost patrol until I actually felt tired. I flew back home, but no sooner did I get there and lay down for about three minutes did my energy spark back up. It annoyed me. Greatly.

Finally, finally, 5 pm came around and the storm finally started drifting off. I'd taken a shower already and was just drying my hair when suddenly all of today's exercise took its tool on me. I groaned and hit my head against the sink counter, the hairdryer falling from my hand. Danny had to come in and help me finish blow-drying my hair.

"All that exercise finally getting to you?" Danny asked, looking like he was trying not to smile. He was failing at that.

"Yes," I mumbled, leaning against Danny and letting him comb my hair. I didn't normally let people touch my hair, but right now the shocks that I was giving off weren't enough to do anything.

"And are you going to do this next time there's a thunderstorm?" Danny said calmly, as though I was a child who had been repeatedly told not to run through the house and had hit my head on a wall because I was running.

"Probably," I sleepily answered, cracking a smile.

***line break***

I woke early and panicked because I hadn't done my homework, but found that Danny had already done it for me. For someone who was against cheating, he faked my handwriting pretty well. I stayed awake until Danny woke up, letting him sleep in again. School was much more fun when I wasn't waking Danny up every five minutes. He asked me if I was okay now, and I told him that if he didn't stop fussing over me we'd be late for school.

He let it drop. Smart boy.

Mr. Lancer was much more pleased with how I acted the day after the storm. At least, I actually paid attention to what he was saying.

"A gerund is a verb that is used like a noun. Mr. Forrest, could you give us an example?"

"Running is fun," I said distractedly. "Running is the gerund because it is a verb, but 'is fun' are two helping/linking verbs and are thus the verb of the sentences, making 'running' the subject and the noun."

"Very good," he praised. "Now then, we'll be working on writing essays that consist almost entirely of gerund phrases..."

I zoned out after that and didn't really pay attention, passing notes with Danny and giving him tips on his essay. I finished the first draft of mine in only a few minutes, but it was poorly written and definitely not my best effort. I would be rewriting the essay later that day.

Algebra passed by very quickly as well and I didn't really listen to what Mr. Koriwa, a relatively young man with white hair and startlingly red eyes, was teaching us. Something about dividing exponents. Sam would probably have to help me with my homework. About halfway through the math period, a younger red-haired boy with pinkish-purple eyes slipped into the room to talk to him; this red-haired kid had to be something like two years younger than Mr. Koriwa. They talked like old friends and the younger boy let the teacher ruffle his hair before he awkwardly waved to the class and disappeared. Mr. Koriwa followed him to the door and I pretended I didn't see them share a quick kiss.

A friend of Mr. Koriwa's, indeed.

***line break***

At lunch, I furiously rewrote the first draft of my essay. I'd used poor wording and had even skipped quite a few words; how did I ever think this draft was a good paper? I listened in to my friend's conversation distractedly.

"So my brithday's next week," Sam said, looking happy.

"Sixteen, right?" I very suddenly spoke, startling my friends.

"Yeah, 16."

"Cool, Sam," Tucker said energetically. "Are you having a sweet sixteen party?"

"Ugh, no," she scoffed. "In case you've forgotten, I'm a _unique_ individual. I don't need a party."

"But you'll let us get you presents, right?" Danny asked suspiciously.

"Because even if you say not to, I'm getting you a present anyway," I snorted.

Sam never did win that argument.

***line break***

I actually got my homework done before a ghost attacked for a change. Well, 'attacked' wasn't the right word. It was more along the lines of... Kitty popped up unexpectedly and I nearly shot an ecto-ray at her in surprise.

"Kitty!" I scolded. "You know not to surprised me like that."

"Well, your birthday is in a few months, right kid?" she countered. I rolled my eye.

"Yeah. In like, August. It's not even Halloween yet."

"So I'm not allowed to know what you want in advance?" she said, feigning a hurt look. "Your own foster mother?"

I snorted and pulled her into a hug. "Try asking in June, okay?"

She sighed. "You're no fun kid. But I actually wanted to ask you if you'd ignore Johnny and I tonight. He wanted to bring me to a movie. One of those romance ones." 

I shrugged. "Yeah, go for it. I don't really care what you do as long as no one gets blown up. And remember to at least _act_ human, okay? We don't a repeat of what happened when you brought me out for cotton candy when I was eight."


	23. Chapter 23

**Hey guys! So, I'm stuck. Most people haven't done the poll I put up on my profile, which is understandable. Some people are too busy or don't like to go onto profiles or simply don't want to vote. That's totally fine with me. I will be taking down the poll because I've actually decided on what I want to do after this story. When this story is done, I'll be taking a break from Rose's story and instead I will be working on entirely new story for Danny Phantom. The next story will have absolutely nothing to do with this one. BUT THIS STORY WILL BE FINISHED FIRST! And yes, there will be a sequel to this story at some point when it's done. Also, we're actually getting close to the end of this one. **

**A major plot point will come up in this chapter! BE ON THE LOOKOUT! Also, this chapter is very short and I'm sorry for that. I'm just busy at the moment.**

Kitty and Johnny did a pretty good job of not making themselves noticeable as ghosts. Sure, they looked a little outdated, but they enjoyed the movie silently. I knew this because I checked up on them at one point, just in case.

It was a few days before I saw Kitty again. I was out with Danny, Sam, and Tucker at the park; we were trying to find ways to channel my electricity into something useful. I almost destroyed Tucker's PDA, the electricity arcing away from my body after holding it for nearly a minute. Sam said that the electricity was almost cartoonish; it had come off of my body in a bright yellow.

I finally got frustrated and without even thinking about it, I made a ball of ecto-electricity in my hand and threw it at a tree fifty feet away. It exploded, and the tree sort of got burnt to a crisp.

"Nice aim, kid," Johnny said, chuckling. "Try not to destroy other trees though, wouldja?"

"Da- Johnny!" I laughed. I nearly called him 'Daddy'. I used to call him Daddy, though, before I got old enough to not need to.

"Hey, kids. Listen, there's some trouble comin' around. You two-" Johnny pointed to Danny and I. "-might wanna keep to your human form for a while." My foster ghost father looked almost... scared. I'd _never_ seen him scared.

Before any of us could ask him questions, he was gone.

***line break***

"I bet it's Plasmius," Danny growled the next day at school. "He's always trying to make my life miserable. Now that you're with me, he'll probably try to do the same to you."

I nodded a little. "He's a bit of fruitloop, isn't he." It wasn't a question, it was a statement.

"Yeah." It was Sam who answered, looking annoyed. I'd never seen her look so murderous before.

Danny's ghost sense went off, but mine didn't. We looked at each other, and then mine went off a moment later. We were reacting to each other's ectoplasm again. We shrugged it off and went to class.

Mr. Lancer did not appreciate that neither Danny nor I had done the homework, though I told him it was because we tried to do it together and then one of the Fenton inventions went off and blew it up; that was actually the true story.

"I need proof, Mr. Forrest," Lancer scowled. I showed him the scorched remains of the papers.

***line break***

Mrs. Tetslaf did not appreciate my lack of energy in Gym. She asked me what happened today, and I told her it was because the thunderstorm had gone away. She narrowed her eyes and didn't say anything. Dash absolutely pummeled me in dodgeball, which probably made him feel good about himself. He also shoved me into my gym locker after class. Danny let me out, though I would have gotten myself out with intangibility if we'd been alone.

We shared a quick kiss before we left the locker room. Or at least tried. Kitty appeared and stopped me, sobbing. She clutched my shirt and I held her, unsure of what was happened.

"What happened, Kitty? Why are you crying?" I panicked. My core sped up and I felt myself hiccup.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I'm so so sorry. The man who took you away, that Vlad Masters man - he burned out your eye-"

"I know," I said, hyperventilating. "Don't cry about that-"

"He's gathered up all your enemies," she whispered. "They're attacking Amity Park tomorrow. I'm so sorry. I couldn't stop him."

My core stopped. My vision went blurry. Plasmius was going to attack Amity Park. And he had all of my enemies. My vision darkened, and then I heard one last thing before I went fully unconscious.

"Rose!" Danny's voice.

_I dreamed. I saw Johnny's broken body; I saw my own core outside of my body, shattered into a million pieces. It was trying to repair itself, but I wasn't paying attention to that. Everything hurt so much. So much. My ghost glow dimmed and died; without my core, I couldn't change back. I was stuck as a ghost. I wasn't worried about that. I was worried about Danny._

_Plasmius was walking over to his crumpled form. Jack and Maddie were staring at their son in horror; I faintly realized that he was almost completely powerless, the last of his energy being used to maintain his ghost form. I staggered over to Danny and planted myself in front of him._

_"Rose, no!" he shouted, panicked; he knew what I was going to do. Jack and Maddie's expression became more shocked; they knew about Danny and I, but no one else did. They knew what I was going to do._

_I turned back at Danny and smiled painfully. "Don't worry, Danny. I'm going to protect you now. Everything will be fine." I looked back at Plasmius. He was smirking; he didn't think I could defeat him. But I knew I could; there was one attack he didn't know I had. "Say goodbye, Plasmius." _

_This was for my father, Johnny 13, who would be crippled for life. This was for my mother, Kitty, who was losing her only child. This was for my friends, Ember and Sam and Tucker, who had fought valiantly beside me. This was for Jack and Maddie, who were afraid of Danny and I. This was for Jazz, who had coached me through my mental breakdowns in the days leading to now. Most importantly, this was for Danny, who would be losing me. _

_I took a deep breath, summoned up the very last of my energy, _

_and_

_screamed._

**Because what's a good Danny Phantom story without Plasmius being a butt, right?**


	24. Chapter 24

I woke with a start, shivering all over. The dream was already fading; all I could remember was passing out. Jack and Maddie were beside me, I realized. So was Danny and Jazz.

"Hey," Maddie said, brushing my hair away from my face. She shot a glance at Danny, and I realized he must have told them. I stared her in the eys and smiled a little, calming down. She hadn't dissected Danny nor me yet, so there was no reason to worry. Maddie looked a little awkward; Jack broke the silence.

"So... you are Danny really are...?" He almost looked excited; two kids in the ghost hunting business with him, I supposed.

"Yeah," I managed. Danny shot me an apologetic look, which I returned with a _forget-about-it_ expression. "Yeah, we're halfas."

"There's that word again," Maddie mused. "_Halfa..._"

"It means half-ghost, half-human," Jazz said, ignoring the surprised looks on her parents' faces. "You three need to clear out. This was a mental breakdown, and I might be able to pull a little bit of information from Rose."

Jack and Maddie understood and left, but Danny took a bit of persuading. When we were finally alone, Jazz gently asked me questions and she didn't force me to answer them. I answered them because I could trust her, and because I needed to tell someone. After a while, she managed to put me into a sort of trance. She dragged answers out of me easier after that, and I found myself speaking about the dream I didn't remember.

She let me go after about an hour, and my gaze was unfocused as Danny came back into the room. He cracked a smile and I forced one back, acting on the sudden impulse to grab his hand and swing it.

"Rose," he laughed, "when you do something like this, it must mean you want something."

"No," I murmured, staring at the ceiling and trying to remember what Jazz and I talked about, "I just want to hold your hand. Is that too much to ask?"

Danny kissed me, a longer kiss as we were all alone. His kiss brought me out of my stupor, and I shook my head and blinked a few times before frowning.

"Talk about an effect. Does psychology always do this, Danny?"

"Nope," he chuckled, "just with Jazz. She's good at making people speak about what they don't remember." I nodded.

"Yeah, I remember she had me talking about a dream I had while I was out... but I don't remember dreaming."

"What was your dream about?" He looked like he expected it to be about him. I focused my gaze on the ceiling, concentrating.

"We.. were about to die..."

***line break***

Jack and Maddie put Danny and I through our paces very soon after I recovered from fainting. Johnny decided to pop by, and it took a little work to convince the elder Fentons not to shoot him. I managed to convince them that he was alright by telling them that he'd raised me. That put him in a good light in their book, I guessed. After Johnny went back to the Ghost Zone (Danny and I got to mock fight with him), Jack and Maddie got us to agree to fight each other. No holds barred.

Of course, I put my agility to good use. I spun away from Danny's ecto-blasts easily, standing on random objects and letting him destroy them. The lab was soon a mess, but neither parent really seemed to care. Jack looked excited for the most part, watching the fight eagerly, while Maddie took notes and pointed out tactics.

Danny and I were on our last bit of energy, and so I decided to go for the tactic that I hadn't tried yet. I'd dodged the entire time, but that took up energy by itself. As soon as Danny seemed to have made a plan, I lunged for him. I caught him by surprise enough that I got one hit off. Then he caught me by the wrist and pinned me, winning the match. I felt myself shift back into human form and Danny rolled away, shifting back himself.

"So?" I asked, grinning wildly. "What do you think?"

"That was awesome!" Jack shouted, looking giddy. Maddie just smiled and write down more notes. I got the feeling that she was pleased.

***line break***

Maddie let Danny and I stay home that day, mostly to let me rest and because Danny refused to leave my side.

"Danny?" I said distractedly.

"Hm?"

"Do you think we'll die while fighting?"

Danny didn't answer for a minute. My boyfriend was surprised by my question; I could tell that much without looking at him. I could practically hear the gears turning in his head.

"I don't know, Rose. I really don't know." He laughed dryly, humorlessly. "The scary part is that we might."

I nodded, and we rested in silence for a while. We got up only to eat, and when we got up I shivered. I was cold without Danny next to me, strangely enough. Danny had an ice core and radiating coldness; yet being next to him made me warm. It might have just been my core reacting to his, but I wasn't sure.

We had soup for lunch, vegetable soup for me and chicken noodle soup for Danny. I bit my own lip multiple times while eating, and at one point I started to bleed ectoplasm. Maddie collected it, saying that she could use it for tests; I didn't really mind. The wound healed quickly anyway. Once upstairs, I found that I was really tired. I didn't want to be standing. Danny noticed this and picked me up, settling down in bed with me. I shivered lightly and snuggled close to him, letting him hold me.

It really made me happy to know that he was here beside me.


	25. Chapter 25

We were being attacked.

It happened during school. It was smack dab right in the middle of the day when Danny and I had to run for our lives. Skulker, Ghost Writer, Spectra... three of Danny's worst enemies. Two of mine. I didn't really mind Ghost Writer. He was a rather nice ghost, for a ghost anyway. He had been the one to teach me to speak English instead of Ghost, which is what most ghosts spoke. But he was attacking my boyfriend now, and now I needed to be strong. Danny and I found a quiet spot to transform, and we went out to fight.

It wasn't our best choice. We were almost immediately knocked back just from one combined attack. We fought and were losing, but we stayed strong. As half-ghosts, we couldn't hold our own as well as a full ghost could. Two half-ghosts and three full ghosts really wasn't a fair fight... Suddenly I heard a voice from behind me, there was the sound of an attack, and Skulker went flying.

"Hi, guys!" Kit laughed, bouncing up next to us. Cobalt floated nearby, smiling a little. "So, did you guys know that Cobalt and I are actually one ghost? He's my other half, and we can fuse together for a really powerful attack!" He full-on crazy grinned then. "But I like to stay separate. I like to see him."

"Talk less, fight more!" Cobalt shouted, blasting Spectra in the face.

Kit cackled. "Oh, don't worry! I've plenty of friends!"

"Friends...?" Danny paled.

Two ghosts slunk in, and rather odd-looking ghosts they were. They were sort of bandy-legged, and they walked as though they were going to sprint any moment now. One had big, silver, feathery wings, and his eyes were a deranged silver as well. The other had big, red, fiery wings, and his eyes were a dangerous red.

"Should we call in the circus?" the silver one called to Kit.

"No!" Kit shouted back, blasting Skulker again. Danny and I teamed up on Ghost Writer, and I noticed he looked very eager to fight both of us. It broke my core to see him want to kill me so badly. "Leave the show outside! Get them to help the town!"

"Got it!" the red one shouted, and they kicked Spectra in the back before scampering out.

When all three ghosts were finally defeated, Danny sent them back to the ghost zone and we carried on outside. I didn't think Kit had actually meant a show, but apparently he'd created a circus in his time away from the asylum. There were so many types of ghosts and humans there; all of them were armed. They were causing confusion in the opposing army; Jack seemed to be trying to restrain himself from shooting every ghost in sight. Danny and I waved to the other Fentons, but we were soon occupied with none other than Plasmius.

I smiled coldly. "Hello, Masters."

***line break***

We fought him for hours. Even with both of us, we were getting nowhere. When he shot Danny out of the air, I growled. I landed in front of Danny protectively, and I could see that he was running out of energy. I twisted an Ecto-Dejecto in my hand; the goop still hadn't been fixed. Danny took it gratefully, even though I could sense his worry for me. I was running out of energy too. Well, there was one solution to that...

Without realizing it, I'd told Danny to prepare himself. I glared at Plamius, and then I reached into my own chest with one intangible hand and took out my own core. I whined and gasped as it left my body, my body violently rejecting its removal. I lifted my head up to see that plasmius actually had a sort of surprised look on his face. I felt my energy pulse in my hand, and I felt how easily breakable my core was.

_My core was shattered._

I remembered part of the dream. I had shattered my own core.. I shook my head and spoke sharply to Plasmius. "Die." I threw my core with all my might, and Plasmius froze. It hit him and _disintegrated._

He grunted in pain and shouted as all the electricity inside my core hit him. In return, I felt the energy leave me. Only a small amount remained in me; it kept me from turning right into ectoplasmic goo. My vision blurred again; I fought to stay conscious. My ghostly glow left me, and I felt my body lock into my ghost form.

"Rose," Danny whispered. I threw him a small smile and helped him up; I nearly fell myself. I wasn't gaining more energy, not without my core. Plasmius groaned in wrath.

"You think you can defeat me with such a simple trick?" he shouted. "All that did was weaken you, shadow child!" I smirked a little, but I soon groaned and clutched my chest; my blood was pooling inside of my body because of my core's absence.

Danny stood in front of me then, and I felt myself tremble and ripple. I forced myself to hold onto my form. I would not melt. I lost consciousness on my feet, and the next thing I remembered was fighting Skulker again. Jazz, Maddie, and Jack had learned who was a good ghost and who needed to be defeated; they were doing a fine job of defending the town. Ember, Sam, and Tucker were fighting side by side. They took down ghosts together, any previous grudges pout aside for the protection of the town. Just as the robotic ghost went down the second time, I heard a crash.

Johnny.

"Daddy?" I squeaked, shivering in horror at the sight of his ectoplasm pooling around his broken back.

"Don't worry about me, kid," he grunted. "I'll be fine." Another crash sounded behind me. Danny. My father saw me hesitate, and he barked at me, "Go protect Danny! I'll be fine!" KItty floated down next to him.

"Go, Rose," she urged me quietly. I hesitated again, and then nodded. I remembered my dream now. I knew I needed to act on it.

I saw Johnny's broken body; I saw my own core outside of my body, shattered into a million pieces. It was trying to repair itself, but I wasn't paying attention to that. Everything hurt so much. So much. I wasn't worried about that, though. I was worried about Danny.

Plasmius was walking over to his crumpled form. Jack and Maddie were staring at their son in horror; I faintly realized that he was almost completely powerless, the last of his energy being used to maintain his ghost form. I staggered over to Danny and planted myself in front of him.

"Rose, no!" he shouted, panicked; he knew what I was going to do. Jack and Maddie's expression became more shocked; they knew about Danny and I, but no one else did. They knew what I was going to do.

I turned back at Danny and smiled painfully. "Don't worry, Danny. I'm going to protect you now. Everything will be fine." I looked back at Plasmius. He was smirking; he didn't think I could defeat him. But I knew I could; there was one attack he didn't know I had. "Say goodbye, Plasmius."

This was for my father, Johnny 13, who would be crippled for life. This was for my mother, Kitty, who was losing her only child. This was for my friends, Ember and Sam and Tucker, who had fought valiantly beside me. This was for Jack and Maddie, who were afraid for Danny and I. This was for Jazz, who had coached me through my mental breakdown. Most importantly, this was for Danny, who would be losing me.

I took a deep breath, summoned up the very last of my energy, and _screamed_.

The last of my energy was poured into my wail, electricity shooting right through Plasmius's body. I watched the older ghost crumple and die, and then he withered away to nothing. Danny would have no more trouble with him ever. My energy died; my scream stopped. I felt myself ripple again; I forced myself side to hold on just one more moment.'

I turned to Danny, trembling. I had a smile on my face, and I could sense his horror. I couldn't see anything anymore; my energy had taken with it my ability to see. Or maybe my other eye had been damaged. I didn't know. I gave him another smile, trembling more violently. And then I _melted._

**Danny's POV**

I watched him melt. He killed himself to protect me. I felt myself cry, even though I hadn't cried in years. Tears slid down my cheeks for the loss of my boyfriend. I almost didn't hear Clockwork come up behind me; he had fought on our side.

"He's dead," i whispered hoarsely. "Rose is _dead._"

"Danny," Clockwork began, a small smile on his face - _why was he smiling when my boyfriend just died?_ \- "Rose made a sacrifice to save you. But look closely, Danny."

I stared at the ectoplasmic goo that used to be my boyfriend, and I felt the small pulses of life coming from it. My eyes widened in surprise and horribly joy.

"He's not dead, Danny," Clockwork told me. "All he needs is his core."

I looked over at the pieces of yellow core that Rose had thrown to weaken Vlad. It had stopped trying to reform. I nodded slowly. "We'll get him back. _I'll_ get him back."

***line break***

My parents had taken the goo that my was boyfriend and put it in a beaker; Rose had been stabilized and purified, and his core had been swept up and put into a case to keep it safe. It was slowly, slowly reforming.

"He's no conscious, sweetie," my mother told me. "He's alive, but just barely. He may not ever reform his body, and he might not even come out of this... ghost coma."

I nodded slowly again. It was hard to taken in that my boyfriend might not ever wake up. My mother kissed me on the forehead.

"Go to sleep, dear," she told me. "We'll keep trying to wake Rose up so that he can reform."

As I went to leave the lab, the beaker shuddered and flung itself at me. It shattered and for a split moment, Rose reformed. He was still smiling, and he reached one hand out to me. Then he fell, and there was just ectoplasmic goop remaining. I raised one eyebrow.

"I don't think Rose agrees that I should sleep, Mom," I told my mother.

**LOOK HOW EVIL I AM HAVE I DESTROYED ALL YOUR FEELS? Yes, this story is now over. However, THERE WILL BE A SEQUEL! Not after this story; I'll be starting a completely new story after this one that has nothing to do with this one. Stay tuned, guys! Until next time!**

**-Zelith**


	26. Chapter 26

**Okay guys, the sequel to this story has been posted! If you want to read it, it's called "Dark Path, Bright Light". I'll give you a little snippet of it here, in case you decide you don't want to read it.**

It's been a year since Rose melted. It's been a year since my boyfriend sacrificed himself to save me from Plasmius. And it's been a year since I've been able to think about him without thinking about how he nearly died.

**That's only the first few sentences, but I hope you guys do decide to read it! Cheers!**


	27. Chapter 27

**Hello everyone! I have a question, one that I think many of you will enjoy:**

**Should I rewrite this series?**

**I would start with this story, Shadowy Rose, Dark Path, though perhaps with a different name and summary. The basic essentials of the story would stay the same, but grammar, writing, and plot would all be updated and better than before. **

**There is a poll on my account right now, with three different options:**

**Yes - this would mean that you want a complete rewrite of the story.**

**Yes, but leave the plot alone - if you enjoyed the plot, this would be the option for you if you wish for a rewrite.**

**No - you don't want a rewrite, period.**

**If there is an option that I did not mention above, PM me and I will happily add the option (provided you are polite). If you do not have an account and cannot PM me, reviewing on this story is also fine!**

**Thanks to all of you for reading my very first story, and I hope you will all respond!**

**-Zelith**


	28. Chapter 28

**Hello again! It's been decided: Shadowy Rose, Dark path will be rewritten! I've actually already started posting it, heh... It's now Someone Worth Saving! Please check it out and tell me if you like it!**

**-Zelith**


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